Devil-level Sudoku magazines launched in France and Belgium

Friday, April 25, 2008

Two magazines dedicated to the hardest possible Classic Sudoku puzzles were launched by the Keesing Group in Europe. Published under the Tazuku international brand name and titled Sudoku Démoniac in France and Sudoku Extreme in Belgium, the 96 page 88 puzzle twin publications are priced at 4.10€ and available in both countries since April 18.

"It was a matter of listening to our customers" says Vincent Riviere, Logic Puzzle editor at Keesing France. "We decided to launch Sudoku Démoniac to answer growing consumer demand for harder Sudoku puzzles. Keesing is the leading Sudoku provider in France and to maintain this position we must have presence with all variants and in all difficulty levels. Thanks to our collaboration with Conceptis, Sudoku Démoniac today is the magazine with the hardest Sudoku puzzles in France."

Evil solution techniques

As previously published on conceptispuzzles.com, the trend of puzzle fans looking for harder logic puzzle challenges was identified by the Japanese publishing industry and is doing its way to Europe. According to several Conceptis publishers, as more fans become familiar with Sudoku solving techniques the sales of magazines and books with harder puzzles is going up. Welcoming and being part of this new trend, Conceptis hasrecently upgraded its very hard Sudoku level making it significantly harder through the introduction of particularly difficult solving techniques.

"We divided the very hard level into three sub-levels” explains Jochen Vetter, Conceptis Number Logic Product Manager. "The first sub-level contains puzzles with difficulty ratings of 050-100 requiring expert solution techniques such as Naked Triples, Naked Quads and Locked Pairs. The second is dedicated to difficulty ratings of 100-300, requiring exotic solution techniques such as X-wing, XY-wing and Swordfish. The third level goes up to over 300, requiring evil solution techniques such as Coloring, XY-Chains, XYZ-Wing and others. Anyone able to solve a very hard Conceptis Sudoku should in my opinion qualify for the next World Sudoku Championship” Vetter adds, tongue in cheek.

Related resources

• Conceptis Sudoku
• Harder Sudoku boost sales in global Sudoku market
• Very hard Sudoku requiring new advanced solving techniques launched by Conceptis