bethlet.net

Puzzle Mania

There's an article in today's Wired News about Su Doku a Japanese number puzzle. Most people who know me with any degree of intimacy beyond casual acquaintance know that I'm a big puzzle fan. I used to sit in Mrs. Clarke's Accelerated English class my junior year of high school doing logic problems and puzzles during lectures. Jeni used to turn around and laugh at me all the time.

I don't really know when my love affair with puzzles started. Probably when my father sat me down and showed me how to fill in a logic problem grid by reading the simple statements and drawing conclusions from the information given (and not given). I liked filling in the boxes. It was very orderly. And neat.

I'm sure that when I first came across Su Duko, they weren't called that. Well... maybe they were in Japan, but in whatever Games magazine (or actually it was probably Dell magazine's Math Puzzles and Logic Problems) they were called something different. [Edit: They were called Number Place.] I used to gobble those magazines up. The logic problems I grew bored with after a while, but I still start to drool when I thumb through some of the math puzzles. They publish a few math puzzles in Games magazine, but not nearly as many as I'd like.

The thing I find so amusing by this Su Doku boom is that, actually, I don't find them very interesting. I went through a phase where I really enjoyed them, and did them compulsively, but really it's pretty simple deduction. If you fill each little box with all the numbers that could go there, it's really easy to see which numbers must go where. Of course after a while you don't have to fill all of the possibilities in, but you get my drift. It takes a good eye but not all that much brain power.

Nowadays, I have a subscription to Puzzle Japan. Everyday, three or four new puzzles are posted and you accumulate them as you stay subscribed. So right now, I have access to 619 puzzles. This will change at 4:00 this afternoon. They have seven different types of puzzles: Sudoku (they don't break it into two words), Edel, Kakro, Slither Link, Nurikabe, Hitori and Light Up. My favourite is Nurikabe, by far, and then Hitori, Kakro and Light Up (which isn't very hard, but is very fun). Sudoku comes toward the end. If you go to their site you can try a few of the puzzles and see what they're all like - I know the Japanese names don't help much.

The Edel puzzles are lots of fun but I like them much better on paper than digitally. Conceptis has them too (and a few other visual puzzles), and they have them in colour as well, which is nice.

Puzzles of any kind are great, of course. Keeps your problem solving skills sharp. Any of you out there who are addicted to these Su Doku, do take a look at some of Puzzle Japan's other stuff, because some of it really is very good. Drop me a line if you get into it (I'm curious), or if you're unsure of how to do some of them. The instructions they give are pretty straightforward, if terse.

Profile

Archives

Flickr