It's Puzzling
Do you know the joke that goes, “There are three kinds of people, those that are good at math and those that aren’t”? I can relate to that joke because I’m firmly in the “aren’t” category. This is common knowledge around my house and, consequently, my school age children have long since banned me from helping them with their math homework. But I believe there is a corollary to that joke where there really is a third category: Those that are good at math, those that aren’t good at math, and thirdly, those that don’t like math but are, nonetheless, addicted to Sudoku.
I have just joined the third group.
For those few of you who are still not familiar with Sudoku, it is a number puzzle with 9, 3x3 boxes. Putting in the correct numbers, 1 through 9, in each box, and then having only one of each number in each vertical and horizontal row solves the puzzle. I am not positive but I believe Sudoku is the Japanese word for, “Another way to waste time when you should really be doing something productive”. I really admire the Japanese economy with words.
I knew about Sudoku but managed to avoid it for months. I am a word person, so my puzzle of choice is the crossword puzzle. It’s true. I have an uncanny memory for obscure words and irrelevant trivia, a skill that has no real world application other than crossword puzzles. So I’m sort of a crossword puzzle snob. I once got an eleven-letter word meaning luck (serendipity) and felt intellectually superior all day.
But my eleven-year old daughter loves Sudoku and several of my friends carry around their little Sudoku notebooks. I’d see everyone at the pool doing it. People hanging around their kid’s sporting events do it. Sudoku is everywhere. It’s insidious (a nine letter word meaning spreading in a stealthy but dangerous manner), and truth be told, I was starting to feel left out.
One day, when I was supposed to be writing and couldn’t think of anything to say, I asked my daughter how Sudoku worked. She was delighted. Not only to did she quickly explain the basic rules, she filled me in on her strategies. Talk to anyone who does Sudoku and they will gladly share their personal strategy, which is clearly superior to anyone else’s strategy. I tried it and it turned out to be kind of fun. Because Sudoku is all numbers, I guess I assumed it involved addition, subtraction or multiplication – one of the higher functions. But it only involves the ability to count to 9, and that I can master. Then I found electronic Sodoku on my computer and it’s even better than playing on paper. If you play electronically, you can use this function that will tell you if you are making a mistake- not that I use it, of course. That would be cheating. I’m still a beginner, but I’m finding that even at that level, I am able to waste significant blocks of time solving the puzzles.
But maybe I’m not wasting time at all. I recently read that doing mental exercises like Sudoku keeps the middle age mind sharp and can keep dementia at bay. Maybe completing a Suduko puzzle is like doing 50 mental push-ups- without all the inconvenient sweat and exertion. If I can keep my remaining brain cells functioning, I’m willing to try anything, even working with numbers.
And after just a few weeks with Sudoku I feel sharper already. Here’ my proof. Without Sudoku I would never have been able to write this column.