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Saturday, June 11, 2022

Sudoku Square Pattern 345 Horizontal

Another favorite pattern of mine is what I call the 345 Horizontal Pattern or 345 Non-diagonal Pattern. You can see a sample of it below.


I usually remember it as 345, 726, 891. And again, you can switch the order of rows or columns. And 345 can be vertical or horizontal. But once you find the 345 sequence in a row or column, then the entire square pattern should hold.

This square also has another Bonus sequence and I think you can easily spot it from above. If you guessed the 123 Diagonal Pattern, you are correct! As long as I see a 123 diagonal in any 3 by 3 square, I immediately know that I am dealing with a 345 Non-diagonal Pattern.

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Sudoku Square Patterns 357 Horizontal Pattern

Another favorite pattern of mine is what I call the 357 Horizontal Pattern or 357 Non-diagonal Pattern. You can see a sample of it below.


I usually remember it as 357, 694, 812. And again, you can switch the order of rows or columns. And 357 can be vertical or horizontal. But once you find the 357 sequence in a row or column, then the entire square pattern should hold.

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Sudoku Square Patterns 135 Horizontal

Another favorite pattern of mine is what I call the 135 Horizontal Pattern or the 135 Non-diagonal Pattern. You can see a sample of it below.

I usually remember it as 135, 946, 728. And again, you can switch the order of rows or columns. And 135 can be vertical or horizontal. But once you find the 135 sequence in a row or column, then the entire square pattern should hold.

This pattern is also what I call a Bonus pattern because it has another easy-to-remember sequence of number within it. Can you spot the numbers?

If you guessed 234, then you are correct. I could memorize another set of numbers as 234, 856, 719, but instead of doing that, I know that if I spot the sequence 234 in a row or column, then I'm dealing with a 135 Horizontal Square Pattern.

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Sudoku Square Patterns

I have been playing Sudoku for many years and what I noticed was there were certain 3 by 3 square patterns that seem to come up in every new game. Sudoku is made up of 9 by 9 squares or can also say, Sudoku is made up of nine 3 by 3 squares. And the patterns that I have noticed are in the 3 by 3 squares. Memorizing these patterns can help speed up your puzzle completion time.

Here is an example of a 3 by 3 square pattern.

 

This pattern is one of my favorites and I call it the 123 Horizontal Pattern. I usually memorize this pattern as 123, 589, 746, if you read each row from top to bottom. Once I spot any of these combinations in a row or column within a 3 by 3 square, then I can most likely complete the entire 3 by 3 square.

Just look for any 3 by 3 square with one row or column with the number 1, 2, and 3. It doesn't even matter if you reverse the order, or switch the order of 1, 2, and 3. For example, the above pattern can appear as 321, 985, 647 if you switch the positions of the first and third column. Or it can appear as 231, 895, 467 if you again switch the first column with the second column. Or you could switch the order of rows and come up with a pattern like 589, 746, 123. As long as you identify that the 123 numbers are in the same row or column, then you can expect the other numbers to follow the pattern 123, 589, 746.

But maybe I should call it the 1 2 3 Non-diagonal Pattern instead because this pattern will still hold even if 123 is vertical. I have noticed that there are diagonal patterns, too. However, spotting them might not be as easy as looking for horizontal or vertical number sequences.

I have tried to come up with patterns that are easy to remember such as three successive numbers or three successive odd or even numbers. Below is a list of the patterns I have identified so far: (a.k.a. stands for also known as).

Hopefully, these patterns will help you out in solving Sudoku faster. Who knows, in the future, you, too, might come up with your own favorite patterns which you'll hopefully share with other players in the world. 

Once you have been able to memorize all these patterns, then you might want to try your hand at Sudoku Pattern Adjacency which is another technique I share to try and speed up your Sudoku puzzle solving time.


Monday, March 28, 2022

How Much Can You Really Earn From Bitcoin Games?

With the popularity of NFT games on the rise, I wanted to try out one and find out how much I can realistically earn if I played the game on a daily basis. I picked Bitcoin Sudoku from the Google Play Store.

After playing a game of Sudoku, I can earn between 1400 and 3000 points. These points can then be exchanged for Bitcoins after meeting a certain minimum threshold. I needed nearly 10,000 points (between 4 and 5 Sudoku games) before I could exchange it and I got 0.00000001 Bitcoins which, as of the time of this writing was equivalent to 0.01 USD or about 1 US cent. So, if I played this game on a daily basis, I would get 3.65 USD after a year of playing. I'm not so sure that's a smart way of spending my time and phone's energy, plus wearing out my phone's touch screen.

Bitcoin Sudoku also has a maximum number of games allowed per number of hours. I guess this is to prevent players from playing the game continuously using some kind of AI-PC setup. So even if I could up my daily output to 10 cents per day, or 36.5 USD per year, this would require either active participation on my part, or some technical wizardry to come up with an AI who can play this game continuously without getting bored.

The developer/s of the game on the other hand, earns about 0.18 cents on every ad that it shows after every completed game. That's roughly 90 cents every 5 games, or 9 dollars per day if I upped the number of games I played per day to 50. That's 3,285 USD going to the game's developer/s after a year, and that's passive income on his part since all he had to do was wait for me to play his game. That's nearly 100 times what I'm theoretically going to get if I played the game at maximum effort for an entire year.

So, although many articles talk positively about the earning potential from NFT games, I think that most of these games are actually a waste of time and energy - time and energy you could be devoting to actually learning more practical things. While there is potential in trading for game pets or game items in other types of games, the chances of that occurring on a regular basis is probably like winning the lottery.

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Trailer

Warning: Possible spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk. 

I just saw the new trailer of Star Trek Picard and it appears that Trekkies have a great second season to look forward to by March 2022. The trailer shows Q, Guinan, The Borg Queen, Vulcans mind melding with human children, and time travel to Earth 2024. Check the trailer out for yourself below.

 
 
So like any other time travel movie, we expect that something has happened in the past that changes the events in the future and our heroes have to make the correction, otherwise, the future is doomed. It will be interesting to see why Q has once again re-emerged. If you have been watching Star Trek Discovery, it was mentioned that the Federation hasn't heard from any representative of the Q Continuum for a long time, and they have nothing to do with the moving "black hole" that is endangering the Discovery crew's future. And Discovery is already ahead of Star Trek Picard's timeline. (I think)

I also remember, from trading cards, (again I think) that Guinan is supposedly as powerful as Q, although they have never gone head to head in the original Star Trek Next Generation series. So how will these two interact in this new season?

Also, why is the Borg Queen alive again? Didn't the Enterprise crew deal with her in the movie First Contact? Will the Borg collective rise once again and become a threat to the universe?

And what happens in 2024 that is significant to the Picard and friends' future? Humans and Vulcans met for the first time in 2063 and was the reason for the birth of the Federation? If they meet earlier, is this the reason for the divergence in the time line?

As a next generation fan, I can't wait to see it all tie together next month.

Sunday, January 16, 2022

The Covid Pandemic and Post Tribulation Beliefs

I have been thinking about Christians who believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will only return for His people after the seven year Great Tribulation period.

The Bible says that during the reign of the Antichrist during the Great Tribulation, people cannot buy or sell without the mark of the Beast either on their right hand or on their forehead.

We have experienced how hard it is when our rights become limited. Governments can restrict movement during the pandemic by removing our rights to go out of our homes, our rights to riding public transportation, or access to malls and other establishments, and even other regions and countries. People can easily lose their jobs or business or source of livelihood.

So, if you are a Christian who is present during the seven year Great Tribulation, can you really survive? Even if you are a Doomsday Prepper, and have your own farm for food, solar panels for energy and deep well for water, how long can you last? And if governments take these sources of necessities away from you, what then?

It has been easy for governments to sway people into getting vaccinated. They use carrots and sticks. How easy will it be for the one world government to sway people into getting the mark of the Beast on their right hand or forehead? This pandemic is the test if one rule can be imposed on the entire world by all countries and if every individual can be forced to follow.

Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If a believer finds himself in this situation, God will give him the strength to live on or the courage to face death for the Lord.

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