> when the hardest Soduku problems in the world succumbed to a brute force search to my lame program in less than a few something something ms, I kind of shrugg

> when the hardest Soduku problems in the world succumbed to a brute force search to my lame program in less than a few something something ms, I kind of shrugged at the fancy methods. I think you're coming off as dismissive, which is why you're getting downvoted. Puzzles like these have the purpose to entertain a human solving them, and they do that pretty well. If you seek entertainment in developing algorithms to solve these puzzles, you should adjust your challenge to modern computers: Up the size to 100x100 or more, see how your algorithm performs, and go from there. Spoiler: NxN Sudoku is NP-hard (NP-complete, to be precise), so have fun - maybe you'll even win a million dollars. Now, if you want to really challenge yourself: Write an algorithm to create Sudoku puzzles that have a unique solution and as few initial numbers set as possible. Maybe you'll even improve your coding skills beyond mediocre. ;)