Shadow options are the only way I can play Sudoku as well; this is also potentially why I don't enjoy playing Sudoku. It always feels like the only way to make progress is by making a number of informal suppositions and waiting for a contradiction to reveal itself. This is surely true of a large class of games, but the only type of constraint you have in Sudoku is "no direct collisions" (i.e. two instances of the same number can't appear in the same row, column or subregion). Since all of these constraints are essentially of the same class, I can't keep any more than one or two of them in my head at a time, hence "shadowing". When I compare this to a game like KenKen, where there are a number of different classes of constraint (i.e. all of Sudoku's, as well as the mathematical constraints introduced by KenKen's rules), I find that I can hold a larger number of those constraints in my head at once, even when they have non-local effects.

I only know a couple strategies for Minesweeper, so it was pretty cool to see this writeup make distinctions between local and global approaches, not to mention calling out explicit situations where guessing is necessary.