I start with 1s, look in the row blocks to see if I can fill any, then the column blocks. Then move on the 2s, 3s... If a block or row or column is mostly filled in I see if I can get any of the rest to close it out.
Wait, you start by trying to find anywhere you can place a 1, then once you've got those you move to 2's and so on and so forth? Like... Just looking at the whole board? You don't break it down and work by sections?
What I usually do is going through the puzzle doing snydernotation first (marking when a number can only be in 2 places in a box)
Most easy puzzles can be done with only that, then when it stops being fruitful I fully mark the puzzle up and start looking for things in roughly this order:
triples
x-wings
simple-fishes (skyscraper, 2-wing kites)
xy-wings
xyz-wings
swordfishes
chaining techniques
That's at least my basic rough order of going through solving a puzzle.
That's... a lot. I'm assuming those are techniques for efficiently solving sudoku puzzles? I never thought about it, but it makes sense that there would be defined methodologies for tackling this kind of puzzle.
For each number, I mark all cells where I know I can't put it.
If one block, column or row has only one possible cell where a number can be, I put it there and then update all cells where I now know I can't put it anymore.
This algorithm probably isn't the fastest, but it's easy to do manually.
Not so much looking for tips as I am just seeing what everyone else does. I love sudoku puzzles. I don't think I'm necessarily good at them, but I do enjoy them on the reg, lol.
Thanks for the link, though! I'll keep it in mind.
Start with a random number, look to see where the rest are in the grid, and look at the columns and rows to see if there are any easy ones to fill in, then move on to the next number.
Then there are a few other algorithms I have to use if the sudoku problem is more challenging. Looking at individual lines to see if there are missing numbers. Try to figure out where numbers absolutely cannot go to narrow things down.