X-Treme Sudoku

Workman Publishing Company, 2006. Fine. A clean softcover, no markings throughout, NOT an ex-library book: The next step, like having a whole book of just Saturday Times crossword pu zzles. Even more fiendish, even more fun, X-treme Sudoku proudly presents 3 20 puzzles rated "Difficult" to "Very Difficult." These are the toughest, k nottiest, most demanding Sudoku out there-prepare to have your brain cells crackle, your pencils melt, your mind obsessed with numbers and squares. No one is better than Nikoli at rounding up such a collection. A Japanese p uzzle and game company that started the Sudoku craze over twenty years ago, Nikoli is known for creating the only handcrafted puzzles around. As Tim P reston, publishing director of Puzzler Media, Britain's biggest seller of c rossword and cryptogram puzzles, has said: "It is a matter of great pride t o get your puzzle into one of Nikoli's magazines. Handmade puzzles are much better. . . . It gives you the satisfaction that you are pitting your wits against an individual who has thought about what your next step would be a nd has tried to obscure the path." For X-treme Sudoku, the puzzle-makers at Nikoli went out of their way to ob scure the path. There are puzzles with entire boxes empty. Puzzles with who le rows left blank. Puzzles that form mysteriously beautiful symmetries, bu t demand a calculating logic to solve. For the X-treme solver, paradise.