Baked Sudoku - Christian Lawson-Perfect at MathsJam 2019

My technique for solving problems

Do literally anything, then change it until it works.

Works for:

Finding roots of equations
Packing boxes
Seasoning food

Doesn't work for:

Logging in to online banking
Factorising large numbers
Haircuts

An optimisation:

Make big changes at first, then make smaller changes.

Does it work for Sudoku?

9

4

9

2

1

6

7

9

4

9

8

5

4

6

8

3

6

5

7

9

5

8

1

3

9

3

8

1

Here's a Sudoku puzzle Here's my solution (filled in at random) Step 1: is it correct? (Wouldn't that be incredible?! And drastically change the tone of my talk) Step 2: put the puzzle in the oven Define a dynamical system: at each time step, each cell has a chance of being filled with any of the nine digits. The likelihood is proportional to how wrong the value is in that cell, and how hot the oven is. Right now, the oven is absolute zero, so nothing is changing. Watch what happens as I turn the heat up. The Sudoku has come to a nice rolling boil. Now I'll gradually turn the heat down. Watch what happens. Ta da!