G'morning all,

The NZ Herald here has come up with a new daily puzzle under the 
name of su-do-ku,  complete with local guru who sells a solver 
programme for $NZ30 for the thoroughly bewildered.

It's a 9x9 array of numbers which range between 1 and 9.  A 
starting position is published like this...

5 0 0  7 0 8  0 0 3
0 0 2  9 3 0  0 0 0
0 0 7  0 6 0  4 1 0

6 0 0  3 0 9  0 5 1
0 1 5  0 0 0  9 2 0
2 7 0  1 0 4  0 0 8

0 4 6  0 1 0  5 0 0
0 0 0  0 9 6  3 0 0
0 0 0  4 0 2  0 0 0

The aim is to exchange the zeros for numbers ranging between 1 and 
9 in such a way that...

1. Each line has only one such digit.
2. Each column has only one 1, 2, 3, etc., and...
3. Each of the 3x3 squares is made up of only one digit from the 
range.

The local guru is said to have studied these puzzles over the last 
10 or more years,  and then took some 3 months to write and test 
his programme.  The first two published seemed easy enough, and a 
proggy outline seems not a challenge.

Anybody come across these things before ?

Any comments ?

:-)  
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