Commonalities between X-Ray Diffraction and Sudoku

I've been meaning to make a post about this for a while. (I have a three-month-old reminder in my e-mail box.)

In a February Cornell press release, you can read about Cornell physicist Viet Elser's new algorithm that is apparently extremely good for X-ray diffraction microscopy (so it really helps in imaging tiny biological specimens, which I like to call by the more technically accurate name of "stuff"). However, he and his collaborators also found that the same algorithm can be used to solve Sudoku puzzles (all of them, apparently). Funky.

This algorithm was then used to design a really huge Sudoku puzzle, which an obsessive mother of a Cornell graduate eventually solved by hand. Others had previously solved it algorithmically (or rather, their computers did the solving and they supplied the algorithm).

Anyway, the part that I think is really cool is the diverse uses of Elser's algorithm.