“Dangerous and disturbing this puzzle is. Only a Jedi could have erased those files. But who, and why, harder to answer. Meditate on this I will.” – Yoda, Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
Dangerous. Disturbing. Mind-numbingly confusing. That’s sudoku puzzles to me. I’m a fairly clever girl when it comes to puzzles and mind-twisters, but sudoku has me stumped. It’s so simple: put the numbers 1 through 9 in each column, row and 3×3 box. Yet simple only describes my brain cells when they’re around that type of puzzle. Dad Windu, on the other hand, is a sudoku junkie. He carries a little pad of them around the house, taking every free second he gets to pop another number into the grid. This morning he explained the process for completing a sudoku to me again. I understand the concept, I really do. What I don’t understand is why my brain can’t see the patterns that Dad Windu sees so easily. After about 8 minutes, I had to stop. My brain hurt, literally; I was getting a headache from staring so intently at the page. DW, on the other hand, runs through the Medium level ones (like I was working on) in two minutes or so…while holding a conversation nonetheless. ARGH! He completes the one in the Sunday paper every week; he even looks forward to it! I don’t get it.
And that’s probably a good thing. It’s good for me to remember that the things that come easily to me are not necessarily easy. And there are days that I forget that. Where’s my book of word searches? Now that’s a puzzle I can get into. (In fact, I’m a bit of a junkie about them.)
My Super Bowl commentary will be limited to the dumbest thing I heard during the pre-game show and the best use of air-time during the Half-Time Show.
- “F. Scotts Fitzgerald once wrote…” F. Scotts? I just couldn’t listen past that. She might have solved the problem of world hunger, but I’ll never know because I instinctively shut her out.
- Switching the channel over to the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet. Mrs. Sunday Morning Doughnut Buddy announced that it was cute overload. Mr. Sunday Morning Doughnut Buddy said that it redefined pointless but acknowledged that the actual half-time show would have as well.
I enjoy sudoku up to a point. I am severely left brained, and so I’m really not very good at them, but as long as I’m not competing against someone else, and can take my time, they are fairly entertaining to me. At least the “beginning” level ones, anyway.
I accidentally became a Sudoku junkie when my daughter handed me one and said “How do you do these?” and I sat down to figure it out. The patterns are what you have to be able to see. The Sunday morning paper one, that has SO MANY 9-blocks? Uhm. Not my fav. I can do the Easy and Medium ones, and I had a Sudoku game on my phone that I used to play quite a lot. Hmm. Think I’ll get one for my husband’s iPod Touch.
Bruce Springsteen was a riot.
Sudoku is my husband’s new passion. He finally finished one this morning, paraded through the house like and announced, “I am your Master!!” I had to think of you.
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