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Jellyfish

A Jellyfish is a fish with 4 rows and 4 columns.

Contents

Jellyfish in the Rows

When all candidates for a particular digit in 4 rows are located in only 4 columns, we can eliminate all candidates from those 4 columns which are not located on those 4 rows.

image:Jellyfish.png

Example

In a real Jellyfish, you will rarely see all 4 rows have 4 candidates for the selected digit. Each row can contain between 2 and 4 candidates.

image:Jellyfish-rcx.png

Jellyfish for digit 8 in rows 3,4,6,7 and columns 2,5,8,9.

Jellyfish in the Columns

When all candidates for a particular digit in 4 columns are located in only 4 rows, we can eliminate all candidates from those 4 rows which are not located on those 4 columns.

Example

Because a Jellyfish in the columns often has a complementary Jellyfish in the rows, many computer solvers only report the Jellyfish in the rows. This example also has such a complement:

image:Jellyfish-crx.png

Jellyfish for digit 3 in columns 1,2,6,7 and rows 1,3,5,9

Complementary Jellyfish in rows 2,4,6,7 and columns 3,4,5,9

Notes

Each of the defining lines can have 2, 3 or 4 candidates, but together they cover 4 of the crossing lines. Because there are many possible configurations for 2, 3 or 4 candidates in 4 lines, a Jellyfish is much harder to find than an X-Wing or Swordfish. See Trawling for Fish Using Locked Sets for a technique that makes Jellyfish easier to find.

Because a Jellyfish has 4 defining lines, there will always be 2 lines in a single chute. However, when the defining lines of a Jellyfish occupy only 2 chutes, the eliminations it causes immediately trigger a subsequent Locked Candidates move, like column 8 in this diagram.

image:Jellyfish_lc.png

See Also

This page was last modified 20:55, 4 January 2008.