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Sudoku 101: Lets Get Started
The other day I needed a quick WiFi fix so I rushed into the local Barnes &
Noble. As I passed by the Starbuck’s counter, I noticed a table piled high with
Sudoku books. “Wow! This is getting big.” I thought to myself.
So, what is Sudoku? At a glance, it looks like a crossword puzzle… except with
numbers? Well, yes and no. It does take reasoning and deduction powers to solve.
But no vocabulary is required.
Although a famous mathematician, Leonhard Euler, has a reputation for having
invented what we now call Sudoku in the 19th century, it actually is far older
than that. People have been entertaining themselves with this symbols game for
at least a millennia. This hints at part of the game’s appeal since it is really
about lining up symbols. It is not really a mathematics game at all, although at
first glance it might look like one.
Sudoku puzzles vary in difficulty depending on how tortured the logic required
to solve them. Most Sudoku puzzles are designed to be solved in 10 to 30 minutes
depending on how clever and skilled you are.
There are many good explanations on how to play Sudoku and I won’t go into
details here. Just Google “how to solve Sudoku puzzle” and you’ll get lots of
good explanations.
However, to give you a quick flavor of it here is a short explanation: The
puzzle is played on a 9 x 9 grid with nine 3 x 3 subareas called regions. The
trick is to make sure that each row, column and region only contains a number
once.
Computer programs have been written to both generate and solve Sudoko Puzzles.
However, computer generated puzzles don’t have the subtleties of an artful hand
generated puzzle. Computers can solve the puzzles more quickly and are sometimes
used to score a puzzle as to its difficulty.
But really, what’s the point of having the computer solve a puzzle that’s in
front of you? That would take all the fun out of it!
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