A fine primer that should dramatically upgrade readers’ Sudoku chops.
Learn to solve beguiling brain teasers faster with this superb how-to guide.
Most aficionados struggle through Sudokus on nothing more than untutored brain power, but debut author Klein offers a systematic way to efficiently analyze these ubiquitous math puzzles and suss out solutions. He begins with the basics of the deceptively simple puzzle: a nine-by-nine grid of squares, subdivided into nine three-by-three boxes, with some of the squares filled in. He tasks the puzzler with filling in the rest so that each nine-square row, column, and box includes the numbers one through nine with no repetitions. Then he introduces the key methodology of “candidates”—writing down the possible numbers that could fit in each square to help spot clues that allow the candidate numbers to be ruled out until only one is left for each square. (Most of Klein’s practice puzzles do the first step by already having the candidates printed in the blank squares; purists will object to this crutch, but many readers will be happy to outsource the tedious number crunching.) Filling in candidate numbers pays off by making it easy to see useful patterns, which the author explains in an engaging, easy-to-read style. These range from simple repeated pairs and triplets of candidate numbers that enable candidates in other squares to be eliminated to more abstract and diffuse spatial-numerical patterns like “the X-wing,” “the swordfish” and its gangly comrade “the jellyfish,” and the subtly holistic grouping called the “unique rectangle.” While cunning, these patterns and their associated solving strategies are easy to learn and work astonishingly well; using them, and with the candidate lists handily reducing cumbersome chains of logical deduction to simple pattern-recognition searches, readers should immediately be able to solve Sudokus much faster and to tackle harder puzzles. Klein includes a trove of hundreds of Sudokus, from easy to expert level, and keeps it crazy by throwing in Sudokus that use letters instead of numbers as well as some interesting variants of his own device that have coded phrases and math equations jumbled in the squares. This is the best Sudoku guide in print and should give fans plenty of fuel for their addiction.
A fine primer that should dramatically upgrade readers’ Sudoku chops.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5305-6446-0
Page Count: 302
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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