X-Treme Sudoku

The Japanese creators of these handmade Sudoku puzzles are my favorite. Their process of solving is intuitive yet challenging. Quickly going through all the easier books by the editors at Nikoli Publishing (Easy, Intermediate, Hard/Difficult, etc.) I have gone through five of these X-TREME books, starting a new book after finishing all 320 puzzles. It was time to move on. Now am tackling their Genius-Level Sudoku book. I quickly tire of computer-generated Sudoku puzzles. They don't read your mind like the makers of these puzzles do. The X-treme Sudoku book contains 320 puzzles: Difficult and Very Difficult. Just FYI the Genius-Level book has 318 puzzles: Expert, X-treme and Ultimate. These little books are only 4"x6" and are easily slipped into a bag to take to appointments, on road trips or the beach. The black cover of the X-TREME and the red cover of the Genius-Level make them easy to find. For the money you can't do better than Nikoli Sudoku puzzles. For less than $11 you'll get a lot of entertainment value.

I've been addicted to Sudoku now for about four years and discovered the Nikoli series a couple of years ago. I've completed a few thousand Sudokus including all the Nikoli books: Original Sudoku One & Two, More Original, Expert, and X-Treme (twice now). They are a pure joy and obviously created by craftsmen whose wicked wit shows through. Nikoli Sudoku have made me laugh and wince. A simple puzzle might mean that you spend 30 minutes finding the first key and then the puzzle unravels or a hard puzzle may mean that you get the first dozen numbers immediately and are then stymied for half a day. Easy or hard, Nikoli Sudoku leave me feeling satisfied. What frustrates me about other Sudoku books is the number of times a 'hard' puzzle is just hard because you are forced to trial and error endings, where you are stuck with no where to go and have to start trying to pick one of a pair in order to discover a bust. In a book like X-Treme Sudoku by Nikoli I might be forced to that inelegance once or twice but even then on review I can see that there was a way to solve the problem. It might require 3 or 4 levels of indirection, but that's what 'hard' Sudoku are should to be about. Nikoli Sudoku can be very personal, I feel like they are a game between me and another human being. They are now the only Sudoku I do. It's now 2017, almost six years after my original review of X-Trend Sudoku and I've averaged a copy a year. It remains my constant companion. Thank you to all the wonderful wits at Nikoli.

I found the Nikoli Publishing sudoku puzzles by accident. Occasionally, I purchase small sudoku magazines at the drugstore or grocery store. I stick them in my purse and work the little magazines when I am a passenger in a car/plane or while waiting for appointments. I noticed that I really enjoyed the puzzles in one type of these little magazines and that type of magazine had Japanese characters on the page and small cartoons in the corners that were actually a flip book action sequence. I checked the publisher and found that the puzzles were from Nikoli in Japan. Oh-ho, I said to myself! Let's find some books by Nikoli! What makes these puzzles special? They are not easy but they do not require anything beyond logic to solve. No X-wings and its variations, no swordfish, no jellyfish, and no memorizing special patterns of the little numbers one usually has to write in the cells of tough puzzles. Just pure logic, nothing else; something your brain can solve, if you think hard enough, without the little numbers in the cells. It's very satisfying to solve a puzzle, using just pure logic. Your brain gets a happy little zing as it solves each puzzle. My brain thinks that working these logically workable puzzles is making it a better brain. And every now and then, for the fun of it, I flip the pages and watch the little jogger trying to outrun the rain and lightning. (Different flip sequences appear in each little magazine and book by Nikoli.)

This book is pocket size (smaller than average), but perfect. It has 1 puzzle per page, which is great. I look forward to digging into the puzzles.

I have been enjoying my puzzles every night. They get a bit harder every time, so I have been enjoying the evolution of the book. I did jump all the way to very difficult, so I can say I wish the puzzles were a bit harder. As much as I have been delightfully entertained by these puzzles, I would not say they are extreme.

X-treme Sudoku knocks it out of the park! They do all the puzzle creations by hand, and it shows. These make a lot more sense than regular Sudoku, as your brain must identify the exact number logically, instead of just trying numbers until something fits. This is Sherlock's Sudoku, and I appreciate that! My only complaint would be that I prefer a large-print edition, with space around the puzzle to work with. I felt a sense of calm and peace doing these, because they were put together masterfully! Can't wait to order more of these! :-)

I keep getting these books and they are always fun to do. I can’t complain at all as it’s a great way to pass the time.

Was very pleased with the size of print and book itself. However, it is not "Extreme" (at least from my experience). It says extreme on the cover but when you open the book, the first 150 puzzles are "Difficult" and the next 150 are "Very Difficult". I won't even bother with the first 150 as they are too boring form me. The next 150 will be OK for when I'm watching TV. LOL

ممتاز

Si te gusta el Sudoku pasarás muchas horas divertido.

No other Sudoku puzzles compare to the care that is taken by these Japanese Masters to create each puzzle by hand with unique features. It makes each Sudoku a pleasure to do. I time and rate every one. Hope there are more books like this to follow!

Ótimo desafio para quem gosta de sodoku. Vale a pena

This really is extreme sudoku from the grand masters themselves. My solving was stagnating and indeed, I had given up on finding puzzles that were not only hard enough but entertaining enough (you'd be surprised how difficult it is to find that combination) and then I came across this book. Nikoli have been hand-making puzzles for the Japanese market for over twenty years and know their puzzle making well. These puzzles are very well crafted, very elegant - not only to look at but to solve - and head-scratchingly difficult. If you like to struggle with your puzzles, take three days and/or several attempts at the same puzzle, then this is the book for you. They are all solved by logic alone, no guessing required, and are a joy to solve and a beauty to behold - there's something very aesthetic about a well balanced puzzle and even more so in one that has a defined pattern (this seems to make it harder to solve for some reason) and several of the puzzles have a defined pattern. With 320 puzzles it's also very good value for money. For those of us who have outgrown the newspapers and mass market publications and prefer logical, well balanced and aesthetic puzzles then this book is a challenge not to be missed. Well done and all respect to Nikoli.