Sodoku - the puzzle craze that's sweeping the nation!

 

Here's another recently added pastime to my morning (and sometimes afternoon) ritual. Sodoku! Apparently, it's sweeping the nation. Book collections of these puzzles find themselves on the New York Times best seller list (collusion between Will Shortz and his publisher, no doubt), and even your local paper probably prints one daily. Hell, even "In Touch" magazine featured a Sodoku last time I read it (do 'stars' do sodoku, 'just like us'?).

For those unfamiliar, Sodoku is a crossword puzzle of sorts, that may or may not have originated in a country I am obsessed with, Japan (though currently it is sweeping OUR nation). The twist? It involves numbers instead of words. There is a grid, 9 boxes across and 9 down, and this grid is further divided into 9 subsets, each containing 9 squares (3 boxes across, 3 boxes down). The puzzle is pre-filled with various numbers between one and nine, and the object is to fill in the missing numbers. The catch: each row must contain numbers 1 through 9, and each subset square grid must also contain 1 through 9, but there can be no repeating or overlapping of numbers in either the rows or subgrids. Get it? Depending on how many numbers you are given in the pre-printed grid, the difficulty ranges from 'gentle' to 'diabolical'.

I, myself, choose to believe that this puzzle solving is a valuable left brain exercise, preventing onset of memory loss, Alzheimer's, etc., rather than the procrastinating device (or another tactic to avoid conversation) that my mathematically challenged spouse bitterly claims it is. If you're aching to get started, here's a website that provides a seemingly infinite number of free puzzles.