Every day in the paper there's a new Sudoku and I've never had one I couldn't solve - until today. I'm sure I'm just missing something and the solution being printed tomorrow isn't gonna help me figure out what I should have done to solve it. I'm sure I could guess and work it out, but I've never had to guess before - there's always been a solution.

So here's the puzzle: http://www.chadhorn.net/misc/sudoku.htm

The top is what was printed in the paper. Below has what I've worked out thus far (in red). If anyone can see even a step I'm missing I'm sure that'll help me finish it :)

3 2 7 1 9 6 5 8 4
8 5 9 4 7 2 3 6 1
6 1 4 3 8 5 2 9 7
1 6 3 9 5 4 7 2 8
7 9 2 6 1 8 4 3 5
5 4 8 2 3 7 9 1 6
9 7 5 8 6 3 1 4 2
4 3 6 5 2 1 8 7 9
2 8 1 7 4 9 6 5 3

i couldnt figure out how to format it. It was hard, i had to prject out like 5-7 numbers out, i erased and reprinted the excel sheet i made 2x before i got it.

I read that solution in the post this morning. But ... HOW did you get to that point, from say, mine (above)?

Because I can't see how to solve it w/o guessing.

I think that's what makes the more difficult puzzles difficult--that there are choices that can only be eliminated by making a guess and seeing whether you end up stuck as a result of that guess. The amount of backtracking necessary for a wrong guess is probably a good measure of the difficulty of the puzzle.

Think of mazes. In an easy maze, any wrong turn quickly leads to a dead end. In more difficult ones, you might have to try going down a path quite a ways before determining that all branches from that path lead to a dead end, resulting in a significant amount of backtracking.

i didnt start from what you had i started from scratch, also you have to guess at some points, and play them out a few "turns" at points, i use pencil and a sepereate eraser for the hard ones, because its that crazy at times.