Why do the puzzles have to be "handcrafted"?

[kristypolymath]

I've read the comments, and no I haven't bought the game yet. The comments suggest that the puzzles are handcrafted, and I'm wondering how a game that is math (and written with software) couldn't have auto-generated puzzles.

[Andy]

This is explained when Simon from Cracking the Cryptic promotes this game. Essentially, New York Times and other popular distributions of Sudoku will randomly generate solvable puzzles, and even the "Insane" puzzles require little more than a few basic tricks, or conversely they resort to brute forcing the solution.

For these puzzles, there are points which require a very specific technique to solve that encourages logic over brute forcing. That is what they mean by hand-crafted; the techniques you have to use are intentional by the setter, and there is rarely ever an alternative logical deduction. In other words, you're not just handed a completely random Sudoku made by a computer.

With the other Sudoku variants made such as Chess Sudoku, less numbers are provided with more rules added, which shows more of the 'hand-crafted' aspect. It's been commonplace for Sudoku puzzles on the channel to have virtually no numbers on the grid at all because of the rule set put in place.