Is there really an infinite number of possibilities for Sudoku puzzles?

No. A “very large number” is not the same as an “infinite number”.

No, since it is a grid of nine by nine using nine numbers , the number of puzzles generated is finite. If you check out this site, http://sudoku.infoforliving.com/2005/05/just-how-many-sudoku-combinations-are.html, you will see the actual number is, 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960.

Of course it’s not infinite!

I don’t know the actual number, and I can see from @GingerMinx‘s link that there’s a lot of disagreement about how to calculate the actual number—and I don’t feel like doing the calculation myself now to try to resolve the question.

But it cannot be an infinite number. Since the solution involves the digits 1–9 repeated nine times I agree that there are a huge number of possible pattern solutions, and a multiple of that number of “puzzles” (because you can set up a very large number of “puzzles”, each working out to the same solution), but it’s still a finite number.

Heh heh. Everyone else has red the question. I realize it’s not unlimted but for me it might as well be.

I’m not going to see puzzle #23,673 and think, “Oh, man! I’ve done this one already!”

@mathwhiz1 The quick mathematical answer is there are a finite number of possibilities. Here is a proof: There are nine 3×3 cages in a sudoku grid, and each cell can only take one of 9 numbers, thus there are less than 81^9 puzzles. Clearly there are many combinations that are illegal by sudoku rules, and many more that are isomorphic. Thus you could calculate the exact number with very careful counting or a computer algorithm. If the calculations are uninteresting, then you can just believe @GingerMinx; I do. Regardless, the upper bound of 81^9 will suffice to show that it is finite. Though as @netgrrl implies, anyone who could ’‘recognize’’ a sudoku puzzle as one that they have solved before deserves a medal and unending admiration from many people.