Last week I found the Friday difficult Killer Sudoku reasonably easy, but this week it is even easier. I would say there is only one step that I would think needs a little bit of experience with Killer Sudoku, but not anything complicated, other than that it is all straight forward.
I don't want to give anything away while it is still worth points, but I would be interested to know what other people think.

I hear it's time to dial up the Killer Sudoku Difficultometer

I usually find the Friday difficult Killer quite challenging, but I agree with Michaele that today’s puzzle was relatively straightforward. It will be interesting to see how many people solve it. Looking at the stats for the last four Fridays, the number of solvers does not suggest that there has been a trend for the puzzles to get easier. The figures are as follows:

10/07 253
17/07 300
24/07 226
31/07 242

Apart from July 17th, the figures are remarkably consistent. There was much more variation in the number of people solving the medium Killer on the last four Fridays. These are as follows, with the final figure showing the difference between the number solving the two puzzles on each day.

10/07 289 +36
17/07 347 +47
24/07 383 +157
31/07 208 -34

The relativity between the number of solvers on July 10th and July 17th is broadly in line with what I would have expected. More people solved the less difficult of the two puzzles, but the extra day allowed for solving the difficult puzzle reduced the gap. The figures for the last two weeks suggest that the medium was too easy on July 24th and too hard on July 31st.

Thanks paulv66, interesting numbers.

I would say that today's medium killer was probably more difficult than the difficult killer. Tomorrow I will compare the method for solving each puzzle and post a comparison.


I agree, it is usually my favourite puzzle of the week, but the last 2 weeks have been much easier than usual.

"Easy" a relevant term.......as for some, to what you posting about, the puzzles are difficult but solveable.......the fact that they are solvable does not neccessarily mean they are easy........for you, yes........for others not

I hate to admit this.
When it comes to Fri and Sat KS puzzles — I often use this strategy.

I try my best to reduce possibilities. In the case of today’s (Aug 7) puzzles, something popped out early. Two unrelated cells were limited in their possibilities. Then I use trial and error (T & E) .

Sometimes, something pops and I do not have to use T & E.

ditto, Eclipsegirl , except nothing has popped up for the one today.....still working on it

I compared the two Killer Sudoku puzzles from Friday 7/8, as I mentioned previously I thought the medium killer was more of a challenge than the difficult killer. Using my method of rating the difficulty of the puzzles I rated the medium as 102.1, and the difficult as 90.1. I base my points on the steps required to solve the puzzle.

Another way of looking at it would be how many cells had pencil marks during the solving process. The most cells with pencil marks at any one time in the medium was 22 cells, and in the difficult it was 31 cells, perhaps that indicates that the difficult puzzle required more work than the medium.



Dial up the difficultometer

Michaele, you poked the bear

Just for interest I looked at the Saturday difficult killer, and my rating for that puzzle is 111.2, and I think that the techniques used to solve this puzzle are more advanced than the techniques required for the 2 Friday killer puzzles.