Sudoku

Sudoku is an ingenious numbers puzzle that has been receiving some overdo attention from the London press. What makes Sodoku so fascinating is the apparent simplicity of the challenge. Though it's a numbers puzzle, there are no arithmetic calculations required - no addition or multiplication or any of those disturbingly right-brained challenges. Rather, the only rule being: "Each number must appear only once respectively in a row line, in a column, and in a block 3 by 3." That's it. That's the whole puzzle.

Why it has so relatively suddenly struck a UK chord is perhaps a bigger mystery. But apparently, it's bringing deep delight to the misty isles. Here, for example, is an article from the London Telegraph. A few highlights from that article:

• Sudoku is the name of the game that's sweeping the nation. It consists of a grid of 81 squares, divided into nine blocks of nine squares each. Some of the squares contain a figure.
• The Sudoku story begins in 1741, when Professor Hans Sudoku, widely regarded by his contemporaries as the most boring man in the world, attempted to liven up his dinner parties by placing prototype versions of today's Soduku puzzles beside each placement.
• Sudoku has now been taken up by more than 179 different radio and television shows across the British Isles.

Nor am I all certain why the Japanese have been producing such innovative puzzles, but, given their accessibility via the Internet, they are a real gift to all of us who are fighting senility and/or boredom. Sodoku is, apparently, only the tip of the number-placement puzzle iceberg. See Puzzle Japan for at least six more chilling delights.

Puzzling, in deed.