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Akari (Light Up) On Sudoku

Akari (Light Up) On Sudoku

In the Western World, December is often host to festivals of Light. I’ve adapted a puzzle called Akari or Light Up which was originally invented by Nikoli in 2001. His site provides a tutorial for how the rules of the game interplay. Sample puzzles may be found on Nikoli’s Website, which vary in size from 10 x 10 to 36 x 20.

The puzzle shown in the cartoon is fairly easy to solve. It’s a little reminiscent of the old computer game called Minesweeper. Minesweeper offered adjacency clues which included the boxes diagonal to as well as number of exposed sides. When you incorrectly clear a space that was a mine, a rather startling bang! terminates your game. No sound effects for Akari, however.

The Wikipedia article for Minesweeper has a fascinating discussion about patterns and solving strategies by analyses of single and multiple boxes and mine probabilities. Board difficulty measurements are also detailed.

Some online sources of puzzles include: sudoku-puzzles.net (online player, pdf puzzle generator), 100 Free Akari Downloadable Puzzles at download.com (zipped pdf files), and game-pixies.com for online games of varying difficulty.

Have a most enjoyable holiday! I’m glad to enlighten you or at least lighten your mood.