CAROL’S TIPS

I OFTEN find that just two numbers can go in a box... but sometimes I can’t work out which. For example, when there are 1s, 2s and 5s adjacent to a blank cell, I know it has to contain a 3 or a 4. To help me remember this, I pencil 3/4 in tiny numerals and come back to it later. Quite often, this happens twice in one box — there’s 3/4 in one cell, and 3/4 in another. I call these identical twins: I might not know which one is which, but I definitely know they’re there! If these are the ONLY possible places for the numbers 3 and 4 to be placed, then you know that no other number can go into those two cells … so treat them as though you have confirmed the numbers but are just unsure which is which and then discount them from any other place in the box.