Mathematician Claims Breakthrough in Sudoku Puzzle

By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazine An Irish mathematician has used a complex algorithm and millions of hours of supercomputing time to solve an important open problem in the mathematics of Sudoku , the game popularized in Japan that involves filling in a 9×9 grid of squares with the numbers 1-9 according to certain rules. Gary McGuire of University College Dublin shows in a proof posted online on January 1 that the minimum number of clues–or starting digits–needed to complete a puzzle is 17; puzzles with 16 or fewer clues do not have a unique solution. [More]

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Mathematician Claims Breakthrough in Sudoku Puzzle