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Posts with tag puzzles

Filed under: Developer, Fun

Solving Sudoku with SQL

Solving Sudoku in SQLOkay, time to really geek out. Declarative languages are really the way to go if you're trying to teach a computer how to solve a puzzle, and though Prolog is the king of the declarative playground, it's equally geeky to do it in SQL, and that's what Samuel Aina did. His article Solving Sudoku with SQL describes what his title suggests: finding the unique solution to a Sudoku puzzle using T-SQL in SQL Server 2000. While the code isn't short (compare to, e.g., Chris Neukirchen's Prolog version), it's very clear and well-commented and really shows off the power of declarative programming.

[Via Digg]

Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Palm, Open Source, Time-Wasters

Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzles - Today's Time Waster

BridgesIf you really, really want to kill some time today (and possibly the rest of your week), don't miss Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection, a bundle of 24 open source, cross-platform puzzle games. Many of them will look familiar, like Solo (Sudoku), Mines (Minesweeper), and Guess (Mastermind), others perhaps not, but if you like puzzles you're guaranteed to find something addicing in the collection. I spent more time this weekend than I'd like to admit playing Bridges, Loopy (a.k.a. Slither Link) and Slant. Each of the games has multiple difficulty levels, save and load functions, multi-level undo and redo, and a few more features, and each one is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Palm OS. As if that weren't impressive enough, every puzzle is a download of less than 100kb.

[Via Anarchaia]

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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