You will be working in two very different environments this week.

In Workshop 1 you will use the page Sudoku Environment which has some instructions on it. This uses a conventional program (written in Flash).

In Workshop 1 Task 2 you are asked to 'save your progress'. One (not very elegant!) way to do this is to use the Print Screen key (often in the upper right region of your keyboard) and then paste the image into the Paint application (often in the Accessories folder in Windows). Here you should be able to crop the image to be exactly the Sudoku grid. You can then save or print. 

The second environment is Web-EDEN which includes many of the Empirical Modelling tools in a new web-based form which is being used for the first time on this course.  We shall explain more about its use later (it's for Workshops 2 and 3).

We shall put here more details and resources as you may need them during the week. 

If you are new to Sudoku you might find the Wikipedia article useful. What they call scanning and 'cross-hatching' is a very common way of going about puzzles. But it only works for some entries and in quite easy puzzles.

If you are interested in more advanced strategies used by both people and programs have a look at:

• Sudoku solving strategies: http://www.act365.com/sudoku/StrategyTypes.htm
• Sudoku puzzle solver: http://www.sudokusolver.co.uk/solvemethods.html

You can easily find many more of these sites. Some of the Sudoku Forums on the act365 site have very advanced and interesting themes. But in this course we are not pursuing the ingenious logical patterns of argument that many of these sites discuss. Instead we are trying to do something you don't often see. We are using Sudoku to compare the very routine general rules that sometimes work with the creative, particular methods that are necessary at other times. Then we are introducing a way of thinking about computing that helps us combine conveniently both these ways of thinking and working.

 If you are interested in learning more about Empirical Modelling then this link is for you!