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Sudoku – ‘logic not maths’
Sudoku – ‘number puzzling phenomenon’Super Sudoku is the logic game that’s become a puzzling phenomenon. Like many others, we wondered how long the craze would last, but it’s really dug in now, and spreading far and wide. Yet the popularity of it is not that surprising - the beauty of it is that you don’t have to be a maths genius to solve it, just logic – or what we used to call common sense. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly logical person and yet I myself find the logic of solving Sudoku quite compelling. When you’ve been puzzling over the various options of each little square, there’s that wonderful moment when you suddenly solve one square which leads to a cascading effect, and you work out a whole section. It’s a very satisfying feeling, as you mutter “this must be this so that must be that”. Teachers are now realising the value of using Sudokus as brain exercises in classrooms, as it’s good for getting the children to explain and discuss the logic for dealing with numbers and for organisational skills. Sudoku News – ‘British Airways and Mr Bean’British Airways recently banned its staff from doing Sudoku puzzles, arguing that the Japanese numbers game was distracting crew during take-off and landing. Here at Lovatts, we have to remind each other to be very careful about cross-checking all numbers and to stop dreaming about take-offs and landings in exotic locations! What do Sudoku puzzles have in common with Mr Bean films? They are both very popular around the world because they transcend the language barrier. You don’t need to understand English to solve the puzzle, once the few lines of instructions have been translated. People often ask me if Sudoku is just a passing trend, like Mah Jong in the 20s or Rubik’s Cube in the late 70s or if it’s here to stay. When crosswords were first introduced to newspaper readers in 1913, they took off slowly. By the 20s, however, crossword mania was rife. Competition crosswords generated such a cut-throat reaction that solvers in the States were ripping pages out of reference books in their local libraries. Crosswords, while thankfully losing that ruthless element, have retained their popularity around the world. Nearly every country has their own version of the word-crossing puzzle with clues. With the fun and satisfaction they provide it seems that Sudoku puzzles will also remain just as popular.
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