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I don’t 100% agree with that statement. For me, the ‘better’ sudoku puzzles are ones that you can solve with logic, coupled with some ‘estimates that lead to inconsistencies’. I don’t mind those as long as they are only 3 or 4 chains long (ie you can do it in your head.

Take the ‘6’ in the top middle big square … that has to be a 6 because …

1) the middle / middle big square’s 6 must be in the center column, thus ruling out the center column for the top middle square
2) the 6 in the top left big square rules out the 2nd row in the top middle big square
3) the 6 mentioned in 2) also forces the 6 in the top left big square to the top row, thus ruling out the top row in the top middle big square

I know that I can solve this puzzle by ‘guessing’ the value of 1 square (it is either a 3 or a 9), but if I put a 3 in that square, it requires 15 or so passes to come to an inconsistency. Not something that I can do in my head. I guess I don’t want to fall back on the (as my prof use to say) ‘brute force and stupidity’ method.

I thought you would get so many of these that you would get sick of them. I ran the solver and it solved it – true to its name. I looked at the code and it included a ‘guess’ routine. Disabling the guess routine gave a partial solution that is less solved than I got on my own (see below for where I am stuck).

news: Well – its working fine now – no choppy, no hang. Not 100% sure what fixed it. Here is what I did.

– d/l k-lite decoder pack and installed that
– d/l graphics card driver from dell and installed that
– pulled my tv tuner card out of the machine and tried to read the stupidly small writing on it – gave it to my wife (better eyes) who said “Theatre 55U PRQ” … which I took to be “Theatre 550 PRO”
– d/l the “Theatre 550 PRO” driver from ATI and installed that (which I thought I had already done)

Thx for your help.

screenshot …

Looking at the suggestions posted above.

Thx Guys – the dell is my home pc and I am currently at work (don’t you hate that). I’ll look at those links when I get home. Re device manager (I typically right click my computer, properties, device manager – same beast, different route) – which of the 6 or 7 ‘sound, video or game controllers’ items should I be looking at? I’ll post a screenshot of what I have when I get home.

I came up with perfume. Well done HansV. Also, what a great web site. scorpion venom at a touch under $39m per ounce.

1) that is the answer I got
2) I haven’t got that far yet – care to share the inner workings?

Thx Hans. The good thing about the file I am reading is that the first record is a dummy record with various bits of info about the rest of the records and has a pre-defined number of variables. Records 2 to n all have the same number of variables per record. So, I am thinking that I can add the number of variables to the dummy record and then loop through enough “Input #1” lines to read the whole record.

I tested it by writing a million records with 40 variables each.

Testing for speed …

Option 1 – line input #1 with split to get individual variables into array

for i = 1 to 1000000
line input #1, lsRecord
lsBits = split(lsRecord,",")
next i

VBA with million reads and a million splits to give me an array of the input record. This read took 54 seconds.

Option 2 – input #1 inside a for next loop to read all the variables into array

for i = 1 to 1000000
for j = 1 to 40
input #1, lsBits(j)
next j
next i


This took 34 seconds.

Thx Hans – I will check that out.

Thx Hans

Correct. Have an piece of [pie] – untouched by human hands! See here for further reference.

Do you believe it! That bear is now sleeping in my chair!

Ahh, well done Jezza “outfield may be watered”. What they do sometimes have on cricket grounds is practice wickets near the boundary. These are rolled, hard and quick as lightning. So, when the ball hits them, it just zooms away.

I just went and got lunch and I was thinking about this while I was out. There are two other possible causes …

1) As everyone knows, the centre of cricket action on the field is the wicket. This concentration on the middle of the ground causes cricket gravity. As the ball gets further away from the cricket gravity well, it is affected by this gravity less and less and thus speeds up.

2) You probably noticed this while the aussies were batting. If the SA guys were batting, the ball would have slowed down. This is a manifestation of crowd will. When the home team is batting, everyone is willing the ball into the fence. When the home team is fielding, everyone is willing the ball to stop. Naturally, as the ball only has very little will power, it is affected by this crowd attitude.

Alan,

Spin theory aside, the most likely answer is that they sydney cricket ground is very much sloped, especially at the boundaries. You can really see this if you sit in the first row of seats. Any fielder on the other side of the wicket has no feet (well, he does have feet, but you cannot see them. Any fielder on the other side of the field is just an upper body.

I’ve updated my display as per Han’s instructions and also run the little utility that adjusts it. I thought that I would post a screen shot so that more people cannot tell the difference. One change that I had to make was to reselect my lounge background – the old one didn’t look so good with the improved fonts.