Puzzling through the day

Seated at a table in the Media Center, two students quietly write in numbers on partially completed Sudoku puzzles. Piled on the table around them are stacks of blank puzzles, waiting for students to come by and fill them out. The pastel sign above the students announces the presence of one of the media center's newest features, the Puzzle Place.

Puzzle Place's creator, media specialist Lisa Hack set up the puzzle place at the start of second semester to offer something fun for students. Recognizing that she and her fellow librarians in the media center loved doing puzzles, she wanted to make them available to students. "Puzzles are relaxing at the same time they are challenging," Hack says. "They make a nice break from schoolwork."Every day when the librarians arrive at 6:30 a.m., they copy the crossword, Sudoku and other brain teasers from the day's Washington Post and set them out on the Puzzle Place table, located to the left of the tables in the media center. The piles start out the thickest, with about 10 copies each, on Monday, when the puzzles are the easiest. As the week goes on, the puzzles become increasingly harder, so the librarians make fewer copies. While the Puzzle Place currently only features the Post puzzles, Hack hopes to add the New York Times crossword to the selection if she hears of any interest.

Hack had pictured the puzzle place as an area for students to gather around as a sort of "puzzle club," but she notices that most students stop by only briefly to pick up the puzzles. Even though she does not always see students working on the puzzles, the disappearing piles and puzzles found scattered around the media center show her that the students enjoy the puzzles she puts out.

For sophomore Deepthi Thummalopi, the puzzles add entertainment to an otherwise dull lunch period. With nothing else to do at lunch, she saw the table in the media center and began the Sudoku, a puzzle she enjoys completing at home. She will be back tomorrow, at the very least to check her answers to today's puzzle.