The Best Sudoku Tip? Use Snyder Notation #shorts

Puzzle Link:

In response to viewer suggestions, we're planning to make a series of YouTube Shorts (videos less than 1minute long) where we explain some of the secrets of sudoku.

This edition looks at Snyder Notation You can find a video where Snyder Notation is talked through in more detail here:

[PetruRatiu]

Nice to see the rule spelled out, I've seen you guys use it for ages but it didn't "click" that it's normally used when there are only two possibilities in the box. I just tried the puzzle with this in mind and it helped a lot to know that once you remove or overwrite one mark, the other automatically becomes true, without scanning the context.

[foreverccmli]

I love how I already did this without knowing it was called the Snyder Notation #proud

[Similacrest]

Just Goodliffe the entire grid like a boss

[mtths]

I make little dots in their corresponding places (1=upper left corner, 2=upper middle, 3 upper right corner, 4=left side middle, 5=middle of box, ... etc. )
its cleaner and faster.

[Jodawo]

It's the one of the greatest things a solver will learn. There are other notation tricks but this is one that will make your solves much easier.

[theneonx]

Just solved it as my first sudoku puzzle, took 41 mins!

[darknutgaming]

I do what I can, then just number it out completely. I often see the break from just the available possibilities. Idc if I have 7 numbers in a cell, they all relate in at least three fashions to something else, somewhere. It isn’t very pretty, but I haven’t yet found a regular sudoku I cannot solve this way. I’ve quit for ten years because I thought sudoku was dead. What a great channel you have here!

[deniseiln]

Thank you, Simon (and whoever convinced you and/or Mark that these would be a good idea). I knew about Snyder notation from your comments in earlier videos, but it's nice to see it laid out like that.

I've used Snyder notation on occasion when solving Sudoku (I'm advanced beginner-ish), but I was inconsistent and haphazard at best. I was delighted to see how far I could get into the example puzzle with this notation. I'm still not quick, but eh... I'm here to enjoy sudoku, and speed is only one small part of that for me.

[allgreatfictions]

Using Snyder notation, you could have placed that 1 without looking at 2s. In Box 2, Snyder notation places a 1 in column 5, which limits the 1 in Box 5.

[olivier]

Thank you, I was using it a bit empirically, but was not exact enough.

[wheatthins]

I agree, and I learned it from this channel! It has helped me solve some puzzles that I was previously stuck on. Thanks!

[chad]

thanks to you guys that i managed to solve an expert difficulty sudoku by myself within an hour and a half, keep it going

[EntirelyPointlessContent]

Also you can place that 1 by continuing to look at 1s, specifically in Box 2

[ProfessorMady]

I've been doing this without knowing there was a name to this technique.

[spelldaddy]

A nice palindromic solve time, 8:38. I wish there were a full length solve of this puzzle, so I can see how I compare with simon's time

[GothMagpie]

Amazing! I’ve been doing this for years. Had no clue it was a thing!

[thawardu]

Used it for years, nice to know the name of the person who officially defined it first.

[MichaelJones-kqmd]

21:05.

I've never really thought about the names of techniques, but I do use this Snyder notation, have for many years in fact

[guanyin]

After penciling 1s into two positions in box 6, you can also pencil 7s into exactly the same two cells. You can now switch from corner pencil marks to central pencil marks in those cells to indicate a 1/7 pair. Central pencil marks indicate which candidates a specific cell in the grid is limited to. You know that one of these cells has to be the 1, and the other has to be the 7. No other candidates can go in either of these cells. If you tried to place any other number into one of these cells, the remaining cell now has to be both a 1 and 7, which doesn't work for obvious reasons.

See if you can use Snyder notation to find another pair in box 4.

[maekailb]

Giving this a try, I seem to like it so far, seems to prevent noise caused from having too many annotations