Don't solve my Sudoku

I love solving Sudoku. When I was in 7th grade, I learned to solve Sudoku by myself. Since then, there hasn’t been a week in which I didn’t solve at least one. Fortunately, I found a job where I could solve them every day and get paid well.

But I am not in the Sudoku business for the money. I am there just for the Sudokus. I love thinking about problems variations, new and old techniques, comparing problems and finding symmetries in solved boards. Sometimes, when I find a very hard problem and think about it for days, those thoughts spill into my dreams. The following morning, I will know which cell to put the next number in.

The Sudokus I solve in my free time, I often put on this website called SudokuHub. It lets others see the whole history of me solving a problem, and they can suggest solutions. To a layman, it might seem odd that I let others solve my Sudoku problems. The thing is, even more than solving Sudokus, I love communicating with other puzzle nerds. I love exchanging problems, comparing techniques, analyzing solutions. After all, I am a human being, and I need to socialize with other humans. Having a common topic makes this much easier and more interesting.

Now, a new machine that solves Sudoku was invented recently (it wasn’t first time this happened). It is pretty good at Sudokus, possibly better than 90% of all Sudoku solvers. It is certainly faster than any of us. I sometimes use this machine to check my solution and generate empty grid, but I don’t use this machine for generating solutions. The reason is obvious: I don’t want the fun part taken from me. Using this machine to solve Sudokus would be like swapping a morning run for a motorcycle ride over the same path. It just doesn’t make sense.

Many users of SudokuHub have started using the new machine, solving anything they found, including my boards. While I have nothing against someone solving my problems (after I all, I put them there exactly for this reason), I absolutely don’t want a machine to do that. I can enjoy discussing a wrong solution with an author who is sincerely interested in the problem, but I can’t enjoy talking to a machine that pretends to be human. And I always know when the machine is used. Somehow, these people always think that I haven’t heard of the new machine, or that I don’t know how to operate it.

To anyone who rides this new machine, I will say one thing: Don’t solve my Sudoku.