Sudoku Puzzles

Sudoku is a logic puzzle. The most common configuration is a grid that is 9 squares wide by 9 squares high, with lines that subdivide it into 9 smaller 3x3 grids. The object is to fill each individual square with a number between 1 and 9 so that no number is repeated in any row, in any column, or within any of the 3x3 grids.

When the sudoku craze started, it took off like wildfire. According to Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times and, more recently, the editor of several best-selling sudoku books, sudoku was first introduced in the U.S. by the New York Post in April, 2005. After only a few months, more than half of the major American papers were carrying the puzzle.

Even though the typical sudoku grid is filled with numbers, no math is involved. In fact, there are sudoku variations which don't use any numbers at all. Any set of 9 symbols, letters, objects, or even colors can be used, as long as the 9 are all different. One amusing example of this uses photographs of hamsters (!) instead of numbers. If you should get tired of looking at hamsters, you can play with the photographs by putting in your own picture tags, and the site will pull up new pictures from Flickr that match your tags. (http://www.beckysweb.co.uk/sudoku/flickrsudoku.asp).

I also like using a sudoku player that I bought from (http://www.waynegouldpuzzles.com/sudoku/).. It might seem strange to pay for a sudoku player, when there are so many free puzzles available, both in newspapers and online. But when I tried out the player, I liked the features so much -- especially its keeping track of my average time so I could see how much I was improving, and the way the program made it easy to put notations in squares when I wasn't sure of the answer -- that I got hooked and ended up buying it when the free trial period was over.

There's a tutorial at about.com (http://puzzles.about.com/library/sudoku/blsudoku_tutorial01.htm) that will teach you some basic strategies which will be enough to get you started. The more you play sudoku, the more you will discover new strategies on your own - and it's the thrill of making those discoveries that makes the game so addictive.

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Reference: "A Few Words About Sudoku, Which Has None," by Will Shortz, New York Times, August 28, 2005