A Disorderly Mind

When my friend the Ayatollah and I (all those years back) struggled to find answers to Times crossword clues, our old chum Charles would become angry. He couldn’t abide a pastime which is at times inexact and frivolous (as well as utterly time-wasting). The idea that the clue conceals the answer rather than offering it in a straightforward way made no sense to him. Sadly Charles is not with us now to offer his thoughts on Su Doku the numbers game which has recently become a regular feature in both the Times and Telegraph.

Just in case, gentle reader, you are still unaware of Su Doku (also known as Sudoku) it is a numerical puzzle which derives from an American puzzle which was adopted by the Japanese The format is a grid with nine columns and nine rows (yes, that makes 81 squares). Within this grid there are nine “boxes” (three down, three across), and the puzzle-setter completes typically 32 squares with apparently random numbers from one to nine. All the solver has to do is to complete the remaining squares with numbers from one to nine in such a way as to leave every column, every row and each of the nine “boxes” carrying the numbers one to nine without omission or repetition. For every puzzle there can only be one correct solution.

If this sound complicated, you’d better look at www.sudoku.com where the thing is much better explained. But beware, this is a dangerously addictive pastime. I only got to fully understand the game (or whatever you call it) yesterday, and it is already eating into my day-time (and night-time) hours. I’m sure that the younger brother sits in his local pub solving the Times Su Doku grid in about four minutes flat. Our maternal grandmother would have been good at it, but personally I’m not so sure. I still prefer the uncertainty and randomness of crossword clues. Better to be able to argue about the answer to a clue than to have such mathematical strictness.