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Let's Make Number Place (Elementary course)
Strategy Guide
Number Place Strategy Guide
About Strategies
There's a certain pleasure to discovering your own way to solve a puzzle. However, that method requires time and there's no guarantee that everyone will be able to find every strategy.
We've created this guide for those people that would like to become proficient at Number Place but don't have the time to discover these strategies themselves. If you'd prefer to learn by yourself, we suggest you stop reading now.
When confronted with the wide variety of strategies, it may be difficult to determine how much to learn. This guide is designed to teach you to effectively use the Number Place Generator through introduction to Number Place strategies. Of course, you'll also be able to use these strategies to solve regular puzzles as well.
Standard Number Place and Variations
We will only be introducing methods for solving standard Number Place puzzles. While there are many variations to Number Place, the strategies and ideas used to solve them remain the same. In fact, the Number Place Generator uses the same strategies for standard Number Place and its variations.
Human beings will feel that a puzzle is more difficult when you enlarge the size of the board, move to non-regulation block shapes, or force them to consider diagonals.
The Difficulty of Seeing Strategies Mid-Game
Though the strategies may be easy to understand when taken alone, when confronted with a real puzzle the excess of numbers may make it difficult to see the strategies required for a puzzle.
First get the basics down. When you make a puzzle you'll need to consider not just how advanced a solution strategy is, but how difficult it is to see on the board. It's important to thoroughly check before you have someone solve your puzzles.
On one hand you may have difficulty finding a strategy no matter how much you think, but on the other you may find that a change of mood while solving may help you find the solution. If you can't find the answer after concentrating in one spot, give up for a moment and try a different spot or different strategy.
Reading the Diagrams
We will use the legend below in the diagrams that follow.
- Circled numbers are numbers we are trying to draw attention to.
- Lines originating from circled numbers indicate the influence of the number, where that number may not be used again.
- Blue squares indicate locations we are trying to draw attention to.
- Magenta squares indicate the locations where the given number cannot be entered due to the influence of the numbers in the blue squares.