Alfred from Sydney

Hi Alfred. Seasons greetings to you and all you care for! May your lives be full of happiness and peace through the yuletide season and throughout the coming year!

And I'll just add, awesome photos of the eclipse. Thank you for sharing them.

Thank you Alfred for leaving the explanation for me. At present I am printing the puzzle off to see if I can work it out. The idea of a chessboard makes it easier to understand. I think that has been the difficulty for me on tough. I can follow the other puzzles which is good.

Thanks again,

Gen.

Thanks for the advice, Alfred. That's the approach I used. I took one of the pairs and "guessed" which number it would be and then worked forward. I chose the wrong one, of course, so I backed up to the point I left off and chose the other option, which allowed me to solve the puzzle. Is that a fair tactic though? That was my real question.

Hi Again Yoyomet.I think testing for one possibility,and getting information from that is valid. The shorter the sequence,the neater the solution. If the result of the test turns out to solve the puzzle,you should be able to prove that the alternative(s) lead to a contradiction.
Some people call this "trial and error",and think it is not as good as using Alternating Inference Chains, and employing the Eureka notation.(For an understandable explanation of this notation,look up the page of "Dave from Minnesota",and look up the recommended archive.
Regards. Alfred.

Hi Alfred

Hi Alfred

For Tough 1 April 2010, my step 3 was a little different, but using the same logic. I am not sure about how correct my notation is:
3. If c8=2, then c2=5, c4=1.
But, if c8=2, then d8=8, d1=2, f1=8, e4=8 ==> i4=1. If i4=1 then c4=5.
So c8<>2. c8=1.

Just want to thank you for your help with understanding Kraken logic (June 21 page). I finally understood it after reading your explanation!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Alfred, I hope 2011 will be a very good year for you. I do not do the tough very often. Actually when I am busy I just check out all the pictures and glance through some of the comments.

Alfred!

Hi Alfred,
Thanks for the explanation to the tough puzzle. I'm afraid I don't play chess, so I think I'll quit after the hard from now on.I appreciate your response, and now I know why I can't do the tough.

I also wanted to comment on your photos of the eclipse. Beautiful!

Hello Alfred - I do hope you recover from your accident quickly and come back on the site soon.
Best wishes,
Anne

Hi Alfred. heard about your fall from June.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery from Bill and myself.

Hi Alfred! Thinking of you! Good luck!

Thinking of you Alfred, and hoping you are recuperating well xoxo

Alfred, I don't aften get to the tough puzzles, just happened to stop by today. Sorry to hear about your accident but see things have been fixed and you are on the mend.

Hello Alfred, thanks so much for answering my question from tough yesterday..but I was really asking about the solution photo which showed a charge of 50 cents for use of the toilet..hehe..had me puzzled as we dont see charges for such in Oz. No-one else has seemed intrigued, however and it's nice to have a real person reply from you. Regards, Robin.

Hello Alfred, thought I would pop in and wish you well for the New Year. Cheers.

Alfred
We met at June's earlier in the year!

Hi Fred,
Nice to meet you at June's yesterday.
As I'm one of the very SLOW puzzlers on this site, I never get around to looking at ''tough''.
I did not realize that the dog present was yours.
And how did you come to name him ? It is rather an individual name - and he was a remarkably well behaved boy !

I want to thank you for writing your Tough solutions in English. It is such a pleasure to be able to read, without having to decode, your thought process.

g'day Alfred

Hi Alfred, I was wondering how you were. I see you are still active on the site and keeping the brain working. I miss the get togethers we had at June’s.
Cheers Amelia.

Hi Alfred,
Thanks for your welcome!
Whenever possible, I like to study your beautiful solutions in puzzle section
(after a while I got used to your unique and nice way to describe them).
Merry Christimas!
JCO

Thanks for the heads up on the notation Alfred. I've been counting from the top down, not bottom up
So what I thought of as a3 is a7 in Sudoku's notation for the tough 28/10?