I have a good basic understanding of the fundamentals of C++, I also have an understanding of how recursion works too. I came across certain problems like the classic eight queens problem and solving a Sudoku with Backtracking.

I realize that I'm quite lost when it comes to this, I can't seem to be able to get my mind around the concept of going back in the recursion stack and starting again in order to solve the problem. It seems easy with a pen and paper but when it comes to writing code for this, I'm confused on how to begin attacking these problems.

It would be helpful if there were a tutorial aimed at beginners to backtracking or if there were a good book where this was covered. If somebody can shed light on this topic or give me some links to decent references, I'd be really grateful.

And yes I do know that it would be easier in functional languages but I'd like to understand the implementation in imperative languages too.