Sudoku

In an effort to protect my quickly aging brain from turning to jelly, I've started excercising it with this cool little puzzle from Japan.

It's called SUDOKU, and it seems to be getting pretty popular in the U.S. lately. Several newspapers have just started running it alongside their regular crosswords.

It looks kind of alien at first, and it's hard to tell what to do. Basically, you're supposed to fill in the blanks with the numbers 1-9. You should end up with all the horizontal lines, all the vertical lines, and each of the boxes surrounded by bold borders showing the numbers 1-9 without repeating themselves.

Still confused? Here's a couple of places you can learn, with simple visual explanations:

Sudoku.com - They sell a program that makes these puzzles. On the left side of the page, click "rule" and "how to solve."

Puzzle Japan - this site will give you a simple java tutorial. Then you can click on each of the tabs at the top for more info. They also have sample puzzles which come up in an applet, and you can play it online.

Here are some sites that offer sudoku puzzles if you can't find them in your local paper:

Web Sudoku - A site where you can do these online, or print them out. They come in Easy, Medium, Hard, and Evil. You can push a button to see how you're doing, or clear the board to start again.

Daily-Sudoku.com - Just a guy who really fell in love with these while on a trip to Singapore. You can input your email address, and they'll send you a new puzzle every day.

Watch out! These puzzles can be addictive!

Enjoy!