Absolutely Nasty Sudoku Level 4

I love this Sudoku book. Having graduated to really, really hard Sudoku, this book fits the bill. It takes a while to do all of the puzzles so by the time I have finished, I can get a new one to start again because I have forgotten the earlier ones. There is no guessing with these puzzles which is immensely important to me. Bifurcation and nishio are fancy terms for guessing and I don't want to solve puzzles that require that. This book starts with puzzles that may use only one fiendish technique to solve and ends with puzzles that take many techniques to solve. You will be frustrated by these puzzles unless you have taken the time to learn techniques like swordfish, XY wings, Gordonian rectangles, etc. Addicted suduko-ites who are not familiar with advanced techniques might want to pick up Peter Gordon's Mensa Guide to Solving Suduko. Don't let the 'Mensa' scare you. A dedicated normal person can do it. Then work through the Absolutely Nasty Sudoku series. I have had a lot of fun with it. Good Luck!

Love the spiral binding and the general "hardy structure" of the book. The pages are a bit coated so it makes erasing very easy without ripping through the paper. That is a big deal for me. I agree with what some others have said - the book is a bit inconsistent in terms of difficulty. There have been puzzles that I literally have given up on, and others that I have flown through way too quickly. But there are A LOT of puzzles in this book, so I guess it is hard to get them all to line up perfectly on the difficulty scale. And personally, I don't mind being thrown a bone here and there - it keeps me motivated! Overall, I would buy this book again. Very pleased with it!

Condition of item as described!

Tired of 'challenging' Sudoku books from "Will the pill"? Then this is the book for you. When I bought it (March 9, this year), I thought I was big and bad when it came to Sudoku. Then I got a BIG dose of humility when I could not get past the few couple pages, and I realized that I better take my voice down a bit, because this book has puzzles that require methods you'll never need for garden variety Sudoku books. So how to learn how to get to next level (or maybe several levels up)? As mentioned in some reviews here already, this book doesn't have any instruction, it only has puzzles, so you need something else. I also bought the 'Mensa guide to solving Sudoku', and it's a good start, but I felt it didn't covers chains as well, and chains are ubiquitous in Absolutely Nasty .... So I use the tutorials from the Andrew Stuart site ( http://www.sudokuwiki.org/sudoku.htm ) quite a bit too. I know someone will ask, did I use the solver from the Andrew Stuart site also? Well truth be told, yes I have, but only after the fact. Let me explain: sometimes when you're deep in a tough puzzle, you come to the point where you take a guess a cell (is it A or is it B), then follow through to see if it works, using little tiny checkmarks to mark the tentative deductions. And sometimes, this works all the way to end and puzzle is solved, but you can still see all your candidates there. In that case, I'll write "guess worked" in my book, and later, I'll enter the puzzle as it was at the guess point into the Andrew Stuart solver, to see what I missed. Typically it was a XY chain (which I struggled with for a while) Final comments: 1) I wish the puzzles where a little bigger on the page, because drawing all the candidates in one box gets a little crowded sometime. But that’s minor 2) Almost 5 months after buying Absolutely Nasty, I’ve solved all but 4 puzzles in it. Drives my wife crazy when I work on it late at night when I should be sleeping. Those of you who love Sudoku will understand ...

These are not the most difficult I've encountered, but do require some effort. The introduction scared me a bit since it said you must know a lot of tricks to solve them. But I didn't really struggle with the ten I tried. On a scale of 1 to 5, I'd say these were level 3 or 4. A few were easy, most required between a half hour and an hour to solve. The pages are a good size and the pages easy to flip.

I purchased this for my husband. He’s a total soduku snob. He’s a retired math teacher and all sudokus are way too easy for him. Since this is a Christmas gift, he hasn’t given his opinion but others have highly recommended.

All of the Longo Absolutely Nasty books are outstanding for the sudoku addict. If you are a serious sudoku nut, don't waste your time on the mensa series or others who claim to have very difficult puzzles. These four "nasty" books are the most challenging of any sudoku books I've tried. If you consider yourself an expert, I'd still suggest you start with Level 1 and work your way up to level 4. There are no tips or instructions, it's just you against the puzzles. I have gotten endless hours of entertainment and mental exercise from each of the absolutely nasty books. My only question - WHEN can we expect Absolutely Nasty level 5?? I'm afraid to order any other sudoku books - after these, the rest seem like child's play. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Challenging and fun