The devil has possessed me for hours on end, late into the night. It steals my brainpower, smashes my ego, distracts me from more important things. It is the devil’s own best tool and it is SuDoKu.

I grew up doing bookfuls of Dell crossword puzzles snf other word games. Anacrostics were an early timesuck. I have managed to avoid these sorts of indulgences since kids, having not the time, energy, or inclination. But I added a SuDoKu program to the Treo a bit back and find that it has erased hours form my life in its numbing, logical problem solving. Its availale as software, in books, or even in dedicated electronic handhelds. I blame the cousins in Oregon for this one. When I was there a few weeks back they were hunkered over these puzzles, making all sorts of chicken scratches around the edges of the blocks of numbers and spaces. I had heard of the game, but had no difficulty ignoring it. I told myself that it was just another silly puzzle and easily bypassed.

Then I came home, found one of these little programs sitting atop the Palm software bestseller list, and thought there would be no harm in downloading it for a trial. For anybody who does not know, SuDoKu is a puzzle made up of a 9X9 grid of numbers. Each row and column in that grid contains the numbers 1-9 just once. And if you break down the larger grid into 9 smaller 3X3 grids, once again each number from 1 through 9 is contained just once among those nine squares. The puzzles are generally ranked from Very Easy to Very Hard, depending on how many and which squares are filled in to start you off.

The software has a few advantages. I use mine in Pencil Mark mode that allows me to easily update the possibilities for each square. It also allows for some small cheats, like undos, and allows you to freeze the game at any point to try out an option when stumped, and then to retreat easily to that point again if the “guess” does not play out.

I’ve progressed from the Very Easy category up to the Medium and Hard ones, and have picked up much along the way. I know to look for matched pairs as a way to eliminate possibilities for the rest of the row, to look row by row, then column by column, then in each small grid for square solves and to make sure I update my pencil marks for the remaining squares with every bit of progress. I’ve learned to pick better spots to experiment in when logic leaves me at a dead end temporarily. But it’s cutting into my reading time. I could stop. Really.

And the final clue that this little puzzle is indeed the Devil’s tool….his 666 mark appears constantly in the puzzle. In fact there are 3 of these 666 marks in every puzzle–up, down…I will cast thee out! Well, after I grow tired of playing you, anyway.

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Posted by DB in Books, Opinion, Personal, Treo