However, at lunchtime I tried a couple of deterministic paths - considering that this was a monocolour puzzle, I could test to see if certain spaces were on or off - and managed to complete half the puzzle. And then got stuck; I looked for twenty minutes and couldn't find a move.
This added impetus lead me to do a bit of searching - and I found a clever automatic solver which confirmed to me that there was a unique solution, and I'd got the half I was doing right. Then, after a full 5 seconds of looking at the puzzle again, I found the most obvious clue I'd missed (I had a block of five into which I had to fit a four, and I'd only coloured in a single square), and that led to me completing the puzzle.
So, in the hope that I can spare others of the anguish, here are some hints for puzzle 788 of Essential Sudoku DS:
- On the bottom row, you're slightly limited as to where the 4 can go since there must be a maximum of 3 in any one place on the line above.
- Test the top-right corner; see if setting that to 1 causes any contradictory issues.
- The rows and columns with 5 and 4 together need only one square to be lost from the row or column in order for a single square to be coloured.
- If all else fails, the picture is orientated diagonally from top-right to bottom-left.
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