My father is occasionally terribly useful

My dad mentioned this random puzzle game he’s been doing in lieu of the NY Times Crossword (my mother’s the one with the language skills). It’s a Japanese game that’s taken off — it’s not a math puzzle, despite it’s appearance.

It’s called Sudoku, and I have no idea how it’s pronounced. Obligatory wikipedia link…

Basically, it’s a process of elimination. Every board gives you certain information as to what the final state should be, and you need to gather all the other information. My father’s been doing them with pencil and paper — I’ve been doing them in my head. He might finish slightly faster than me…

Web Sudoku is now linked over in the right hand column — I’ve been doing puzzles regularly since yesterday while waiting for things to finish at work. I’m averaging about 12 minutes per easy puzzle — in my defense for everyone who responds with thoughts of “My, that’s slow!”, I’m doing it while working — multitasking puzzle solving into emails, programming, research… okay, so I’m not always the biggest on “time management.”

Manda refuses to even look at it because it contains numbers, but I know she’d be good at it — I’ll try to find a puzzle with letters or symbols instead, just to get her hooked.