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> I'd be very interested to see what an algorithm that solves any valid sudoku puzzle looks like. You might be interested in the article linked to by this post

• ondrasej 16y ago
  The code in the post is based on depth-first search, which basically is a trial and error approach. A well implemented and effective one thanks to constraint propagation, but it is still trial and error. And there are cases, in which backtracking (trial and error) is necessary - at least one of them is documented in the post (the puzzle "hard1" that took 188 seconds).
  • jules 16y ago
    There is no meaningful difference between trial and error and without trial and error. It makes this no less of an algorithm.