Absolutely Nasty Sudoku Level 4

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!

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 minor2) 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 ...

Great puzzles that are always challenging. I will continue to order from this creator!

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!

Difficult, challenging, hard to complete, a lot of fun for those looking for hard-to-work Sudoku puzzles this series is the ONLY book to hae truly hard puzzles. If you want hard puzzles that make you think and look everything over twice, the Absolutely Nasty Sudoku book series is for you. Each book is harder than the last, making the fourth book an ultimate test of your Sudoku abilities and your patience. This series is for those who know hard to work Sudoku puzzles and can finish a newspaper puzzle in under five minutes.I am now solving these puzzles for a third time and have yet to solve each puzzle. This is a series you can count on to make a prime solving event each time you open the book, and every time to try the book. If you an get every puzzle in one of these books then you are a true Sudoku master.

I ordered Level 3 and Level 4 of this series based on reviewers' testimonials as to how they'd finally found VERY DIFFICULT puzzles. I started with and have gone through several books by Wayne Gould/New York Post (Fiendish; Extreme) and tired of non-difficult puzzles. So I expected pencil-chewing agony from these Nasty Mensa puzzles. Now I'm scratching my head wondering when these puzzles will get truly hard. I'm doing them at one sitting, 30 mins max. I haven't noticed Level 4 as being particularly harder than Level 3, but I've been jumping around in both books, not going chronologically.I don't consider myself a Sudoku whiz by a long shot, but whazzup? So far (I'm on #170 of 242 puzzles in Level 4), there's an almost predictable pattern to solving these. There might be a time in solving a puzzle when I'm stymied, but once I figure out how to break the blockage, placing the rest of the missing #s becomes truly tedious... chain after domino-effect chain of effortless solutions which quickly fills up the grid and ends up being boring. I'd like to have several logjams to solve...not just one and the rest is easy.Can anyone recommend truly difficult Sudokus?...requiring "extreme solving" techniques as X-wing, swordfish, forcing patterns, etc (in Paul Stephens' "Mastering Sudoku Week by Week"--excellent instruction for those who want guidance). Maybe the truly hard ones start at #200....??? Will post a follow-up if this is true....

I bought all four of the Absolutely Nasty Sudoku books… twice! I got through the four of them about ten or more years ago. I loved them so much, and found them so challenging, I decided to buy them all again. Thanks Frank Longo!If you excel at Sudoku, you'll love these, but they really are NOT for beginners, like the jacket says. If you want to try out Sudoku for the first time, try something a lot less difficult first.

Es gehört, glaube ich zumindest, zum Besten in der Richtung. Die Anforderung passt total gut für mich, auch das Format ist ausgewogen und entspricht meinen Anforderungen.

If you are finding most of the puzzles in the newspapers too easy and are looking for something more challenging then as far as I am concerned this series is the only choice. Admittedly this first book is quite easy and doesn't require techniques more difficult than naked trebles or x wings but as you go through the series it increases steadily in difficulty so your are able to judge your improvement. By the beginning of book 2 more advanced techniques are needed like xy and xyz wings and then book 3 introduces swordfish and forcing chains etc. Having solved all the puzzles in books 1 to 3 I am now on book 4 and so far haven't been able to solve any so it looks like it's back to the drawing board. If you need help rather than looking at the answer I would highly recommend "Pauls Pages" sudoku website which will give you clues and so help you to work out the answers for yourself.I should add that the quality of the paper is excellent so there is no problem using a rubber as there is with some books with flimsy paper. I also find having a spiral binder a great help as the page not being used can be folded back completely out of the way.

A challenge for senior mind.

Great size of book and love the spiral binding. Excellent quality paper which I really need for all the rubbing out I do. I mistakenly thought that because I managed level 3 that I could move on to level 4 but at the moment I am thinking of buying a new level 3!!! No doubt I will stick with it for a while longer but I am constantly getting stuck and it's not the same when you look😝