There's a craze for this number puzzle. I thought I'd try to hack
together a solver - I'm not the first! - and the following is my
offering (in perl, of course):
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/phillipps/sodsolve
It's not very pretty, but it solved a puzzle rated by the Times (of
London) as "fiendish" in 0.06 seconds on my 4574 Bogomip machine.
The algorithm is probably very similar to that found on sudoku.sourceforce.net.
BTW, the Times is offering a bottle of champagne to solutions emailed to
it before noon on day of publication. There's even a solver out there
that will formulate a solution for you ready for emailing in. How long
will a competition last that can be solved so easily by computer?
I give it 6 months at most.
I hope this counts as fun...
Ian
