You might not believe in guessing, but don't puzzles sometime require them? I.E. you're down to a set of target possibilities for some cells, and there's no more information to be gotten, and you have to just start traversing the tree to eliminate further possibilities.
See, I'm not sure. Lately I've been finding that if I need to go more than about 4 steps down the tree, it's been because I missed something more obvious. I don't know that that is always necessarily true, from a strict logical standpoint, but I've been running with that presumption.
Now that I think about it, using possibility notation seems to encourage tree-diving. Without it, it's very hard to see very deep levels of consequences (or at least I find it so) so working without them forces one to stay closer to the trunk. And, so far, it's been working for me: I haven't been defeated by any boards. When I get stuck, I stop the timer and go off for a break, and usually shortly after I return I see something terminally obvious and simple.
I'm pretty sure I've read that no puzzle is supposed to require guessing. I haven't yet found one I couldn't do without it. (Mind you, there have been some I didn't finish, but that was because I made some unknown mistake and didn't feel like starting over.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-06 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-06 11:57 pm (UTC)Now that I think about it, using possibility notation seems to encourage tree-diving. Without it, it's very hard to see very deep levels of consequences (or at least I find it so) so working without them forces one to stay closer to the trunk. And, so far, it's been working for me: I haven't been defeated by any boards. When I get stuck, I stop the timer and go off for a break, and usually shortly after I return I see something terminally obvious and simple.
Guessing
Date: 2005-11-07 01:56 pm (UTC)