Third-Degree Black Belt Sudoku® (Martial Arts Puzzles Series)

Look & feel: I love the book format as I’m a bit of a purest and enjoy doing sudoku puzzles by hand. I always use pen and it does show through ever-so-slightly on the back of the pages but it’s not so bad that I can’t do the puzzle on the other side (i.e. the paper is thick enough to do double sided puzzles in pen). The puzzles are good size/easy to read. A spiral binding would be the only improvement I’d suggest for ease of writing on the back sides of pages.Difficulty: I’m only a handful of puzzles in but this book is so far providing a great amount challenge (without being completely impossible). It is for more advanced levels. To provide context, I can usually zip through your typical newspaper or online sudoku puzzle in minutes. I have an app on my phone & the “very hard” level puzzles might take me up to half an hour. So far the puzzles in this book take me at least half an hour. I don’t usually have to use the technique of writing in all the possible #s in a given square, but on these I usually have to at some point. Prior to reading these reviews I was unfamiliar with some of the techniques mentioned (e.g. X-wing), though I think in my own way my mind uses a similar strategy when attempting solutions. So that level of skill seems to be necessary, even if it’s not the exact technique. My point being that your basic strategy of number elimination for a given square is not going to be enough for these puzzles. You’ll need to do a bit of mental yoga for these. But that’s what I love.Value: Well worth the money considering how much time this entire book will take to complete.Recommendation: I highly recommend for folks who can breeze through a “hard”-level newspaper sudoku puzzle and seek a longer lasting, mind-stretching challenge.

Usually Frank Longo does good, hard puzzles. I am 156 puzzles in and I would rate two of them as 4-star the rest 2 or 3 star. No 5-stars yet. Most can be solved in 30 minutes or less without much thought.His Second Degree Black Belt book was lots harder.

The puzzles are difficult enough to be interesting, sometimes requiring multiple solving techniques. I haven't found any that included extremely advanced solutions, which to me are just frustrating. Size of the grid is very good. I appreciate the larger squares. Spiral binding would have been nice.

The book starts out with brown belt rather than black belt puzzles. However, the puzzle difficulty level increases slowly and by puzzle 55 gets into black belt territory (x-wings, etc). The book is also printed on lighter weight paper than earlier black belt books. I like to lightly pencil in cells with possible solutions. These can be hard to later cleanly erase with this paper.

Delightful book for intermediate sudoku enthusiasts. Was able to solve every one with nothing more than X-, XY-, XYZ-Wings and Uniqueness strategies. Not too hard, not too easy. Made the social distancing much more bearable.

A good book with a lot of nicely challenging puzzles. For many you will need some advanced techniques, like X-Wing and Two-String Kite. Also, knowledge of the Bug is pretty helpful on some of them.

Arrived quickly, exactly as described, exactly what he wanted.

Good for my level

Excellent present , gives a good challenge, well worth buying

Its horrible, I can't do then, I hate them.I'll have to get another copy to have another go

Perfect present for my partner. Keeps him quiet for hours

Great

I’ve learned so much from a) the person who recommended this book (he calls me Mr. Sudoku) and b) trying out all the advanced techniques that I had to learn to do these puzzles properly. I started them the same way I normally do sudoku, just with pen. Then needed to use cheat numbers because I failed so much... and now I’m back to straight pen because I understand the challenges this book provides. I will most certainly solve or fail all 300 puzzles. It’s a fantastic compilation of sudoku