Sudoku strategy

Crafting a strategy is like solving a sudoku.

You first have to familiarise yourself with the numbers available.
Then you start, mentally, projecting various ‘routes’.

Plotting different scenarios.
You start to mentally see pathways.

Placing a 9 here,
would eliminate a 9 from being placed over there.

Practiced sudoku solvers
start stacking these pathways on top of each other.

That field top right can’t be a 9,
so there would be space for a 7
And a 7 would make space
for a number 5 at the other side of the table

The objective is to fill in more numbers.
To block of different pathways,
and by doing that,
circling in on the solution.

The more numbers there are,
the less ‘thinking’ is required
to fill in more numbers.

Your speed picks up.

And at a certain point there is an inflection point.
No real thinking required anymore, just filling in.

Crafting strategy is about taking your time with those first numbers.
To make sure those are correct,
and correctly placed.

If done right,
the rest of the sudoku will start to solve itself

If done wrong,
the rest of the sudoku becomes more and more difficult to solve, as you run into more and more impossibilities.