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When making this comparison, it's worth noting that Jeffries is showing his work process. Norvig is showing a cleaned up version of his final result after throwing away some earlier attempts. (Source: I spoke with Peter about Sudoku solvers shortly after he'd published.)

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I think that's understood. But what's telling is that no single step of Jeffries' series of articles seems to be approaching any kind of sensible solution. It reads like an amateur -- e.g. me -- trying to write a game and getting stuck in the low hanging but inconsequential fruit.

Because Jeffries' series is about TDD, and not really Sudoku, the process is important. And the process failed him spectacularly.

That is a fair point, but if you just consider the TDD attempt in isolation, it demonstrates some ineffective ways in approaching the problem.

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