VIRTUOUS VIRTUAL: SUDOKU SOURCES
Finally I decided to try completing one of those little nine-by-nine-spaces number squares where every row, column, and three-by-three square must at the end have one of every number from one through nine. In a word, Sudoku.
Others would say, in word, addiction. Already I have been cautioned by my wife not to get lost in this pastime. I tell her it’s a medical insurance policy: if someone ever runs into my 1994 Geo Metro, whose only airbags are under my ribcage, I’m going to do a lot of down time in some hospital, and not caring much for TV I’m going to get terminally bored without something to exercise my brain.
Sudoku does that. It’s been recommended as one of those mental calisthenics that older people should do to keep their neurons nimble and their synapses synoptic. There are some elementary techniques that anyone could independently reinvent, but there are others that, on first presentation by some tutor, can make you feel like you’re back in Algebra II.
Which brings me to the point of this blog: pointing out some of the better sources for those who want to fill in that thing the Herald runs every day on one of the back pages (which at times is ridiculously easy and at other times is seriously challenging).
The Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that some academic scholars think is an asylum run by its inmates, does pretty well at introducing Sudoku. Among the other things you’ll learn is that a Japanese outfit called Nikoli introduced it.
Guess what: www.nikoli.com is still around. At that site, you can find samples of Sudoku which take various levels of skill to solve. Also, if you REALLY want to waste time, they also have stuff on Slitherlink, Nurikabe, Heyawake, Akari, Hitori, Masyu, Shikaku, and Kakuro. Also, assuming you have Adobe Flash Player, you can enjoy animated jigsaw puzzles and a game in which you need to paint a given map with four colors in a way that keeps each color separate. This being an Olympic Games year, it would be well for us to remind ourselves that our nation, wonderful as it is, has no monopoly on ingenuity.
Back to Sudoku. Serious players know that certain newspapers carry really, really tough puzzles, with the Daily Telegraph over in London being something of a rallying point. There is a website that carries both the Back Page and Announcements Page Sudoku from the Daily Telegraph (the guy who devises them runs the website), the Announcements Page generally having the gnarliest, especially toward the end of the week. There’s an archive, too, at least for much of the past year. That’s at www.sudoku.org.uk.
Most Sudoku sites have links to other sites, so once you get started you may not even need Google to find as much as you need. Were it not for that cross-linkage, I’d put more site reviews in here.
If the tutorials at the Wikipedia seem to complicated, there’s a quick but clear summary of all but the most arcane strategies at www.brainbashers.com. That and other Internet Sudoku lessons come with graphic illustrations, thanks to this new technology of ours. Brainbashers also has a multiyear archive of Sudokus, arranged in six categories: Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, and Super Hard. If you’re thinking this might be a good parent-child activity, the Very Easy collection could be a blessing. This is an activity where success at the start can be inspiring, and being hit at the start with a Diabolical from the Daily Telegraph (that’s the actual term) could be so daunting as to produce a mental block.
One more thing about the Brainbashers tutorials: if you play online, you can pick a game at random (but at your chosen level) and get help if you’re stuck from “the assistant.” Ask it to apply on one of the solving techniques and it will demonstrate its usefulness—or if that doesn’t do the trick, choose some other strategem.
While we’re on the subject of learning and how-to, here’s something from yours truly that he has heard from more experienced players as well: there is no substitute for doing a bunch of Sudoku. After a while you get used to the grid, and better at spotting particular numbers, to the point where you can see at a glance the first spaces waiting to be filled. In time, various patterns become familiar. Farther along, you get a sense of where best to allocate your attention (if the great World War II general George S. Patton was right about reincarnation, he’s probably a Sudoku player now).
Also, with time, you learn your own characteristic mistakes, and learn to crosscheck yourself with extra vigor to keep them from recurring. This is the sort of thing people with specific learning disabilities like dyslexia learn to do to compensate, SLD having nothing to do with mental retardation. (Come to think of it, Patton was severely dyslexic, and had to memorize his way through West Point with the help of a tutor his wealthy family provided. His spatial sense, though, was right off the charts.)
Finding your own erroneous tendencies is crucial. If you keep failing to complete the puzzles, try to look back and see why, or copy the numbers into another grid and redo it. Recognizing your own weaknesses and learning how to cope with them isn’t just important in Sudoku. But if you can do that in miniature in a numbers game, it may give you insights into other obstacles to other endeavors.
One more site: once you’re hitting on all cylinders with Sudoku, you may want the wit-sharpening and adrenaline rush that comes with competition. Before going to some major city that has a Sudoku tournament, try www.sudokufun.com, where there’s always a timed puzzle, and where you can check how you did compared with other players (I see that SW, judy serve, pixw1, neja, Funkman, Synthest, 77523, moc, Mat2, hockeyman76ns and C Frank are logged in right now).
No, I’m not going to join them, Doing the March 26 Herald Sudoku was exercise enough. Besides, I want to go see how my wife is doing with her beading.
