Sudoku Grading:

Puzzling Standards

Imagine a world where every last screw has to be custom-built, and everybody drives on different sides of the road. This is a world without standards, and a realm imbued with chaos. This is Sudoku. Every publication seems to follow its own grading scale, and the rifts between different scales can be treacherous. Individuals are needlessly discouraged when their egos, inflated by relatively easy level “5 of 5” puzzles in one, are crushed to sand by “Moderate” puzzles in another. It is a crime to for such a rift to cause mass disillusionment with an otherwise enjoyable form of brain-teasing entertainment. Making it even worse, creating the standards themselves does not require an earth-shattering amount of work.

Creating an open standard for grading Sudoku puzzles is accomplished easily enough. The confusion and disenfranchisement can end. Just as every computer keyboard doesn’t need its own custom layout, every publication does not need its own Sudoku grading scale. With grading systems like the one proposed, the Sudoku-solving masses can ascend from the bottomless, sinister, and putrid bowels of proprietary systems into the light of standardization.