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Let's Make Number Place (Elementary course)
Strategy Guide
Number Place Strategy Guide
Swordfish
Swordfish is an expansion of the X-Wing strategy. While X-Wing uses two vertical and horizontal lines, swordfish uses three. The number you are looking for must appear in one of the intersections, and you can use this information to exclude candidates from the other squares in the lines.
Example 1
Pay attention to the number 1 as well as the three vertical lines in yellow.
Due to the influence of the numbers already on the board, the number 1 cannot be placed in any of the yellow squares. If you now look at the vertical lines, you will notice that 1 can be entered in one of two blue squares for each vertical line.
You can enter 1 in one of two patterns: shown below with either blue or violet numbers.
Since 1 must be entered in one of these two patterns and both patterns fall into the same horizontal and vertical lines, the remaining (magenta) squares in each of the horizontal lines cannot be 1.
We've indicated the possible candidates for each square below.
As you can see, we've now eliminated 1 from the possible candidates of all three horizontal lines for a total of six eliminated squares.
Since swordfish is merely an expansion of X-Wing, it's not that difficult to understand. However, swordfish can be vastly more difficult to find than its counterpart, and can therefore be considered an extremely advanced technique.