I hate this Sudoku. Do you hate this Sudoku?

[Borborygmi]

Most weeks I inherit the previous week's newspapers (yes, they still make them!) from my parents for recycling. For some reason, I feel obligated to do the Sudoku that appears in the Sunday paper. I have no idea why, since I derive no enjoyment from this. But it's become a habit, and it's cheaper to spend my time doing the damn Sudoku than to spend my time on a psychiatrist's couch learning exactly why it is that I must do the Sudoku.

The newspaper always lists the Sunday Sudoku as "silver" meaning medium difficulty. Good; I don't want to do super-hard Sudoku. I don't even want to do a medium Sudoku, but I must. Apparently.

The Sudoku from a couple of Sundays ago is available online. I thought I'd copy it into this thread using the vB TABLE tags, and it would be easy for anyone caring to respond to this thread to edit my table for use in their own reply posts. Yeah, not so much, because I had to do a lot of secondary vB coding to get it to look as halfway decent as this:

·9·	·8·	·4·				·1·
	·7·				·6·
·6·						·4·		·7·
					·5·	·3·			·2·
·5·		·8·			·7·			·1·		·3·
	·2·			·1·	·8·
		·5·		·3·						·4·
					·4·				·5·
				·6·				·8·	·1·	·7·

Wow, that looks terrible. I guess I'll give up on this thread idea. Wait, I can't, because I don't have a psychiatrist to talk me out of it. Someday I must look into that whole GoFundMe racket so I can get a shrink.

Anyway, some missing values are super-easy to fill in; I'll go ahead and do that in green. Figuring out the red 2 was more work than I like, but doesn't involve any ninja-level Sudokuing:

·9·	·8·	·4·		·7·		·1·
	·7·			·5·	·6·
·6·	·5·					·4·		·7·
					·5·	·3·			·2·	·8·
·5·		·8·			·7·			·1·		·3·
	·2·			·1·	·8·				·7·
		·5·		·3·	·1·			·2·		·4·
					·4·			·3·	·5·
				·6·		·5·		·8·	·1·	·7·

And it was at this point that I decided I hate this Sudoku, because the only way I could make any progress from here was to pick a number that could only be in one of two or three squares, guess which one it was in, and play out the rest of the grid to see if it would work or not. I hate that. With this particular puzzle I tripped over my own erasure marks more than usual after resorting to this approach and so it took me several 'guesses' and eventually hand-copying the whole shebang to a fresh piece of paper before finally solving the stupid thing.

"And that's why I burned the children's hospital to the ground, Dr. Neurophysoffsky."

As near as I can figure, I started this thread for two reasons: 1) If I missed something easy and could have avoided guessing to complete the puzzle I'm hopeful someone will point out what I missed, and 2) I'm wondering about the zen of guessing at Sudoku in general... have you failed if you have to resort to guessing? Is it expected that you'll have to guess at some point if you are doing expert-level Sudokus?

[MsWisher]

The key is pencil marks - you don't make an assumption and fill the whole grid out, you pencil in the possibilities for each square and that will generally make the solution for one square obvious which will lead to another and another.

I was going to provide an updated form but I quoted your grid and apparently I am not quite that dedicated to work that hard

[Inner Stickler]

Here were the next couple of moves that I saw.

Step 1:

Assuming A-I left to right across the top and 1-9 top to bottom along the side, B9 has to be 3 because none of the other spaces in that column can take a 3.

Step 2:

A9 must then be 4 because E8 and I7 prevent the other five spaces in that square from being a 4.

Step 3:

G6 must be a 4 because all of the other spaces in that row are in line with a 4.

Step 4:

H2 must be a four because none of the other spaces in that square can now take a 4.

Edit: In my opinion, if you have to guess, it's a badly designed sudoku.

[Borborygmi]

Originally Posted by Inner Stickler

Here were the next couple of moves that I saw.

Step 1:

Gah! I had myself convinced there weren't any clear moves like this to be made. I'm not sure how I missed that, considering how long I was staring at the puzzle. Now I feel dumb, but greatly appreciate having it pointed out. Thanks, Sticks. (Also, it's great having you hanging around here again.) Thanks @ MsWisher, too, although I think she's working on a different level than me.

[Solfy]

Originally Posted by Inner Stickler

Edit: In my opinion, if you have to guess, it's a badly designed sudoku.

I had one of those with an app-generated puzzle. It was "hard," which is the next to highest difficulty level for that app. I swear there was nothing I hadn't considered - the only solution was to guess. Turned me off the app for a while. I simply didn't trust it to provide satisfying puzzles.

Speaking of which, every time I start one (I have the aforementioned app and usually do the Saturday puzzle in the paper) I find myself wondering why, since I really don't care where the stupid numbers go and I have better things to do with my time. I get that they can be a compulsion.