• 0 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle

  • Try to throw the puzzle into sudoku.coach’s solver and you’ll find a ton of techniques that completely eliminate the guesswork.

    I find sukdokus extremely fun and I never need to guess on a 6/7 out of 10 in difficulty. My suggestion is to take it slow at lower difficulties to get acquainted with the simpler techniques before springing to the harder difficulties.








  • Correct.

    • Half to the second (halvanden, still in use today) = 1.5
    • Half to the third (halvtredje) = 2.5
    • Half to the fourth (halvfjerde) = 3.5
    • Half to the fifth (halvfemte) = 4.5

    And so on. You might notice that I sometimes write it like “halvfemte” and other times “halvfems”. The latter is just the way it was spelled when used in a combined word (another fun quirk in Danish that we inherited from Germanic this time!). 90 is today spelled just “halvfems”.







  • The reason is that the Danish numbering system is based on a vigesimal (base-20) system instead of the decimal system. Why is a good question but it might have been influenced by French during a time where numbers from 50-100 is less frequently used, making them prone to complexity. The fractions simply occur since you need at least one half of twenty (10) to make the change from e.g 50 to 60 in a 20-based system.


  • Even worse. 90 in old Danish is “halvfemsindstyve” but it is rarely used today. The “sinds” part is derived from “sinde” means multiplied with but it is not in use in Danish anymore. That leaves halvfems, meaning half to the five (which is not used alone anymore) and tyve meaning twenty (as it still does).

    We are in current Danish shortening it to halvfems which actually just means “half to the five” in old Danish (2.5) to say 90. 92 is then “tooghalvfems” (two and half to the five, or 2+2.5). The “sindstyve” part (multiplied with 20) fell out of favour.

    So we at least have some rules to the madness. Were just not following them at all anymore.