mrry

Since some time in the summer last year, I have often filled in idle moments with a sudoku puzzle. Though one might contend that they are simply crosswords for the illiterate and unimaginative, I relish a sudoku when I have some time to pass. In fact, give me a fully-charged iPod and a book of sudokus, and I would probably never get bored. At least until the charge ran out on the iPod.

The scene adequately set, you’ll understand why I was happy to find a copy of the Metro on board a mid-afternoon Glasgow-Edinburgh bus yesterday. I turned to the puzzles page, and found what can only be described as a new variant of my beloved sudoku. Not killer, nor samurai, nor even hexadecimal. No, this was far more devious. Let me describe it to you:

Somebody had clearly no understanding of the rules had already begun the puzzle, in pencil. You might think that a head-start would be useful, but you’d be wrong. There were numbers that were definitely in the wrong place (on the same row or column as another of that digit). There were numbers that were definitely in the right place. There were incorrect numbers rubbed out (but still visible). There were correct numbers rubbed out (but still visible). And then there were the other numbers, apparently placed with neither rhyme nor reason. With no idea whether they are right or wrong, I had to attempt to ignore them, and yet I would eventually end up confirming most of them as correct. But how? This person must have been an idiot savant….

Needless to say (which I suppose could have prefixed this entire post), I didn’t complete the puzzle, and I still don’t understand how. Whoever left this newspaper is clearly a sociopath, and should be sectioned forthwith. Naturally, I left my copy of the Metro for the next passenger.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 14th, 2006 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.