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It’s stomping across the American terra like Godzilla did on Tokyo. This beast is invading people’s lives in big cities, the suburbs, and the heartland and it looks like it’s here to stay for a while. It starts passive enough, like most addictions do, but soon it consumes its victims whole and they are never the same.
Its name does not sound menacing, quite the contrary, it is just the opposite. In fact it sounds kind of sweet, but names can be deceiving, so beware. Once it has its hooks in you, you’re a goner. I have avoided its clutches, but unfortunately my wife is one of its victims, and I don’t know if I will ever get her back.
So what is this beast, this disease that is sweeping the nation? Its name is SUDOKU. What is Sudoku? Is it a new disease? A new liquor or drug? Another reptilian monster from the land of sushi? No it is none of those, its worse. It is a little puzzle that is a kin of the crossword puzzle but far more addictive. If you don’t believe me ask any one who plays it or knows somebody that does.
 The premise of the puzzle is simple. Every puzzle begins with a nine by nine grid subdivided into nine three by three regions. The trick is to fill in the 81 squares with numbers from one to nine in a way that each row, column, and three by three region has one of each number. Every puzzle begins with a number of the spaces already filled in. The varying number of filled in spaces is what changes the difficulty level. Sounds simple enough, right?
Well it can be. Part of what gives it a universal appeal is the fact that there is no math involved, it is all based on scanning the grids for patterns. There are many versions of Sudoku, from a children’s version that uses pictures instead of numbers, all the way to expert level. The basic or low-level versions can usually be done in about ten minutes but the higher-level versions can take an hour or more. The one thing that they all have in common is that a true Sudoku can have only one solution.
The one thing that is a must is to use a pencil, because these little buggers are unforgiving of mistakes. As I have been able to tell from the moans and groans of my wife, if you catch a mistake too late you have to erase everything you’ve done and start again.
By the name you would, as I did, think that this addictive little demon came from Japan. Well it kind of did. In reality, it all began in the late 1970’s here in the good old US of A as an occasional feature called Number Place in Dell’s puzzle magazine. In 1984 it was imported to Japan by puzzle magazine’s Nikoli’s Kanamoto who made a few variations and renamed it. The new variation really caught on in a way that crossword puzzles never did because the Japanese alphabet really didn’t work well within its parameters.
In 1997, a New Zealand native named Wayne Gould, who was on a trip to Japan, got hooked on the puzzle so much so that he dedicated the next six years to developing a computer program to produce the puzzles. After completing his task in 2004, he took his puzzle to the London Times with the proposition to let them use it for free in exchange for advertisement for his web site
sudoku.com that sold the program for $14.95. After about five months, Sudoku Madness had swept through Europe and Gould brought it to America and struck a deal with the New York Post and the new and improved Number Place was back where it began. Oh, by the way, Gould was a million dollars richer for his efforts.
Now that Gould had let the genie out of the bottle in the land of mass consumption, it was free to run wild and it did. Not since the Rubik’s Cube has a puzzle had such mass appeal. In just a little over a year it has spread everywhere. It can be found in over 140 newspapers worldwide and in 30 here in the states. There are close to 200 Sudoku books on the market and many show up on the best seller’s lists.
The popularity factor was truly evident during this past Holiday season when Retail America, never one to shy away from a fad, was all over Sudoku. Along with the books, there were magazines, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, hand held electronic games, and board games as well. You can even download Sudoku grids straight onto your cell phone. I can only assume that somewhere, in some studio in Hollywood, some producer is developing a Sudoku game show for TV.
I have no doubt in my mind that if there is a TV show in the works that when it airs my wife will be watching it. As it stands now my house has become Sudoku Central. I am hard pressed to find a room that doesn’t have some form of the game in it. It started out slowly enough, most addictions do, with the odd newspaper version lying around and then the books started appearing one by one.
Then at the aforementioned last Christmas it began raining Sudoku and it is safe to say we are more than covered in the Sudoku arena. It has come to the point where I can trace where my wife has been by the trail of Sudoku books with pencils sticking out of them or the torn out puzzles from the newspaper. Both my wife and daughter have the electronic versions to fill in the gaps in case there turns out to be a paper shortage.
Of course the psychologists have chimed in to help explain the puzzle’s addictive qualities. The general consensus being that it is the challenge between you and the puzzle with nothing to intervene, like dictionaries, reference books, or computers. That the gratification you feel once you have conquered it creates a high like a drug. I guess the people who do the puzzles needed to know that so they can feel guilty and worried about indulging in a simple pleasure.
I, on the other hand, don’t have to worry. If the Rubik’s Cube didn’t get me, Sudoku won’t either.
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