Be a Sudoku addict
Since time immemorial, human beings have always sought to challenge their minds. They involve themselves with word and number puzzles and riddles just to test their mental skills. Throughout history, numerous puzzles and games have become popular. Of course there is the ever popular Crossword Puzzle which had millions of people writing letters in small boxes trying to complete rows and columns of words and phrases. Crosswords puzzles are so popular that it has a standard feature of most newspaper all over the world.
During the 1970s, a simple colorful block called the Rubik’s Cube became so popular that it can already be considered a phenomenon. It would not be uncommon then to spot groups of friends of all ages gathered a person trying to solve the puzzle of the Rubik’s Cube. It has almost become bragging rights for individuals then if they were able to solve the Rubik’s Cube.
Now that we are in the millennium, one puzzle seems to be dominating the rest in terms of popularity. The game that I am talking about is the Japanese numbers puzzle called Sudoku.
Like other challenging puzzles, Sudoku appears to be harmless at first. But as most Sudoku addicts know, it is not. It is composed of a simple grid of nine squares, with each containing nine smaller squares for a total of 81 squares all in all. The nine large squares are called the mother squares. These squares belong to the “regions†or one of the three grids of the puzzles. Numbers between one and nine are contained in each of the eighty one small squares.
The game emerged in Japanese mainstream life in 1986. The rules of Sudoku are pretty straightforward. To win at the game of Sudoku, the player must fill in each region, row, column of the grid. There should not be any spaces in the grid.
The hard part in Sudoku is that each of the areas can only contain a particular number once. At the start, some of the spaces already have numbers. These squares are called givens. The players need to supply numbers to the blank squares of course adhering to the rules.
But don’t be led into thinking that Sudoku is a math game. The numbers in the puzzle are used only for convenience. They do not need to add up to a particular number. They do not even need to come in any particular sequence. That is why in place of the numbers, one can use symbols, colors and shapes. The only important thing is to adhere to the rule that there should not be the same element in a row or column of the bigger square.
The fact that it is not mathematical though does not mean that Sudoku is an easy puzzle. On the contrary, Sudoku is a very challenging game. In fact, many individuals all over the world have gone crazy over it. Some have admitted that they are certified Sudoku addicts. These are the individuals who even buy books about and with Sudoku just to satisfy their Sudoku craving.
The allure of Sudoku lies in the fact that it seems to be a very easy game. People are lured into it thinking that can easily crack it only to realize that it is difficult. But when they do it is already too late and they are already addicted to the game.
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