Serhiy Grabarchuk

I received this book free for purposes of review.

This is a book of puzzles containing numbers to be placed in the correct positions. Each row, column and “stream” has to contain different numbers, for example 1 to 5. But I couldn’t at first understand the “solver’s guide” since the diagrams confused me. Also, under the rules only a 3 x 3 grid was shown, whereas the simplest of the actual puzzles presented to the reader were 4 x 4 grid.

But when starting to do the puzzles I found out myself how to do them.

Either I found them to be very easy, or else they felt totally impossible; though when returning to the “impossible” ones I managed to do them anyway.

I thus solved puzzles 1 – 46, and also some of the later ones including a few of the 6 x 6 grid.

But after that I found most of them also “impossible”.

When returning to the solver’s guide I understood the methods described, which showed how to exclude all positions but one for a certain number. But in the actual puzzles I found that invariably there were not just one but at least two numbers that could be in the same position, so I was not much helped.

I wrote to Peter Grabarchuk on two sites asking him if he could perhaps give me some clues or hints as to how to do a few specific examples of the “impossible” puzzles, but received no reply.

I have some cognitive difficulties due to MS so this is perhaps why I have not managed to do all the puzzles. But I found that doing them, and even attempting to do them is stimulating to my brain and I can practically feel new neurons forming.

The puzzles are both enjoyable and stimulating, and I would recommend this book to all those who not only enjoy challenging puzzles but also are in particular need of brain stimulation, for example, many elderly persons, and those with cerebral challenges.

If any readers of this review could provide hints/tips/suggestions as regards techniques to help solve the more difficult puzzles, I would be grateful.… (mais)

[Note: I got a review copy]
As the authors say, Strimko is a game of logic which bears some similarity on Sudoku: there is a Latin square, that is a square NxN in which each row and each column contains the numbers from 1 to N, plus some additional constraint. In Sudoku the grid is divided in smaller squares which must also contain the numbers from 1 to N without repetitions; in Strimko there are strings of numbers with that constraint. This makes a lot of difference! For one, it is possible to create interesting schemes with smaller squares. A 6x6 grid is usually challenging, and even a 5x5 one can be difficult. Moreover, Sudoku addicts will find out that the inference rules for solving the puzzles are quite different, which add to the fun.
I would suggest to buy the paper version, which is anyway inexpensive: with the Kindle version it is not possible to play on the device, and therefore you are forced to print out the puzzles :-)… (mais)