Why is the last level called Devil's 17?

It is a tribute to recent scholarly work of a group of researchers who proved, via an exhaustive computation over 7 million CPU hours, that no 16 or less clues are possible for a unique (Su)Doku puzzle. For more information, google for "There is no 16-Clue Sudoku: Solving the Sudoku Minimum Number of Clues Problem" by Gary McGuire, Bastian Tugemann, Gilles Civario, 2012 (http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0749); Also the commentary on the Nature magazine.

Where can I find more information about algorithmic issues of Doku and related puzzles?

Doku as well as Sudoku (Su = number) derive from a class of puzzles which are believed to originate from the Renaissance.

Among the computational algorithms related to the puzzle generation and solution, we find the so-called dancing chain algorithm most impressive. It originates from a short memo written by the legendary computer scientist Donal Knuth offered as an example of the class of exhaustive counting problems.

I missed the opening brief. Where can I find it to watch again?



You may find more useful videos and urban legends about Doku project at the Doku web site.

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