One, two: hooked on Sudoku

Eraser shavings are stuck to my sleeves and my pencil is poised, ready to scribble notes on a scrap of newsprint. I can barely hear my friends calling in the distance as they munch away at their lunches. As usual, I am much too immersed in filling in the empty squares of the grid at the back of the Style section to notice.

This newcomer to newspapers is Sudoku, a logic game of numbers. Since it was introduced to English newspapers in November 2004 by puzzle designer Wayne Gould, almost every major newspaper in the world has picked up Sudoku, and hundreds of web sites and workbooks are now devoted to supplying and solving these brain teasers.

Blair is no exception — many Blazers have discovered Sudoku's allure. According to an informal Silver Chips survey of 100 students on Oct. 18 during 5B lunch, 25 percent of Blazers play Sudoku. Many Blazers have gotten caught up in this seductively simple game and are finding that filling empty squares in a grid is a surprisingly satisfying way to pass the time.

The universal language

Though Sudoku is relatively new to Blair, its origins can be traced back to Magic Squares, a mathematical arrangement of numbers that the Chinese, Arabs and Greeks experimented with, according to a press release by Crosswords, Ltd. Versions of the game appeared in Dell Magazine in the U.S. in the early 1980s under the title "Number Place." It was then discovered by the Japanese company Nikoli, which renamed it "Sudoku," Japanese for "single numbers." Sudoku soon took on its current form — 81 boxes divided into nine columns, nine rows and nine boxes, each of which must be filled with the numbers one through nine without repeating.

Gould's company, Pappocom, picked up the puzzle from Nikoli and introduced it to newspapers in 56 countries, including the U.S. Unlike word puzzles, Sudoku crosses borders easily because it is in the universal language of numbers, Gould says.

Senior Cesar Nalvarte first spotted Sudoku alongside the crossword puzzle in The Washington Post's Style section and has been hooked ever since.

The appeal, Nalvarte explains, is that, unlike crosswords, Sudoku requires no real prior knowledge. "You don't need to know arbitrary things — just numbers," he says.

In addition, the directions for the game are relatively straightforward, says Mike Mepham, the head of Sudoku.org, a Sudoku company based in Great Britain. "[Sudoku] has very simple rules that may be understood by anyone from eight-year-olds to 98-year-olds," Mepham says.

While these are the more obvious attractions of Sudoku, Marcel Danesi, author of "The Puzzle Instinct," suggests there are underlying, subconscious reasons people are fascinated by puzzles. People are never really taught to complete puzzles, Danesi says. Instead, the urge to complete a puzzle is more of a natural impulse.

Danesi believes that people are drawn to puzzles because they present tangible and upfront ways to reach resolutions. "Puzzles seem to be models of the larger scale questions humans ask. We don't get the satisfaction with the larger ones, but we sure as hell get them here," he says.

Sudoku's accessibility and simplicity make it popular, says Mepham. "[Sudoku] presents itself as a curiosity that intrigues people, then once they have started it there is the challenge to finish it, nculminating in the euphoria at the completion that makes you want to start another," he explains.

Getting hooked

It is this euphoria that has kept freshman Asha Diggs struggling to fill as many empty Sudoku grids as she can get her hands on. Once she finishes one, "I just have to do another one," she says, "and then the cycle just continues."

For most Blazers, Sudoku counteracts boredom. When junior Amani Foster came to school one day without her usual Sudoku puzzle to get her through her classes, she begged one of her friends to rip one out of his puzzle book. But, like a true Sudoku addict, her friend couldn't bear to part with the puzzle.

While Sudoku has been called the "Rubik's Cube of the 21st century" by many newspapers, according to Mepham, it is bound to taper off in popularity like any craze. Still, following in the footsteps of the crossword, puzzles like Sudoku are here to stay. "You'll still be seeing it next to the crossword in 80 years time," Mepham says.