Killer sudoku Puns

Hi everyone!

I’ve been into Killer Sudoku for a few months, using the app by sudoku.com. I always play on Expert difficulty and have found the puzzles to be too easy (given cells by single cell cages, quasi-given cells with mindless adjacent box addition, etc). Rarely, I’ll find myself spending 50 minutes on a puzzle, but those are the ones I find most rewarding. Spending 7-10 minutes on a puzzle at the highest difficulty just feels like a waste of time.

With this in mind, I’ve read some comments on this subreddit but most of them point to websites instead of applications. Are there any good ones for iOS (iPad specifically) that have objectively determined “expert” puzzles? I assume sudoku.com is randomly generated, and the algorithm tends to be too helpful. The “Daily Challenges” are normally only slightly harder than the average random one.

Ideally, I would like to spend an hour on a puzzle. I would like to look around the board in tears, desperately comparing notes trying to find a way to put my first digit down. Any suggestions are much appreciated :)

If you play this mode do you believe you are playing against a real person or computer AI. I've played dozens of games and always get matched within seconds (suspicious) to an opponent with an almost identical win/lose ratio. Seems hard to believe these are real players.

I'm sure there must be some simple logic I can apply here, but I just can't work out what it is...

In this situation, the highlighted cages add up to 38. There is one square within the highlighted cages which is outside of the 3x3 square and one cage within the 3x3 square which is not highlighted in those cages.

How can I work out what the possibilities for both the 'sticking out square' and the non-highlighted square are?

Edit: sorry, image here

I’m looking for a fairly portable killer sudoku book. I’m just starting out so a book that’s easy to medium would be great. Any recommendations for a good one?

For Killer Sudoku players, I created a calculator that will find all combinations for multiple cages within the same block, row, or column. Please give it a try: https://www.killersudokuhelper.com/

I love killer sudoku. Addicted and play a few hours daily and getting better. Still don’t know about x-wings or other fancy tricks but read this Reddit and watch that British puzzle guy on youtube and getting there.

The app I play most has a Battle Feature where you play against other players around the world. It randomly shuffles the difficulty level between easy/medium/hard (so far). (There may be killer games in there at higher ranks, which are my favorite. Usually finish those in under 8-10 minutes.) I’m currently at level 63 after 340 battles and it goes the 100.

Here’s my question. I almost always win when playing Hard difficulty games. I often win playing Medium games. But I ALWAYS lose playing Easy games! Other competitors finish them in 2 min and I typically take 2 min 30 seconds.

Any tips to finish Easy games faster? I’ve tried a bunch of different strategies but I’m always too slow at Easy level! Am I focusing on math too much? Just pop in numbers? Use notes or don’t use notes? What’s the trick that I’m missing here?

Thank you all!

Here it is! Click on the green run button and follow the directions. You will also input numbers it can or cannot be to narrow it down even further.