The Pendulum
FEATURES
Thursday, November 9, 2006 • Page 17
Sudoku allows students to use creativity in new ways
less Kukovich
Reporter
You look in the paper and it’s there.
You’re waiting for class and someone’s
doing it. You go to the store and there’s a
book full of it.
It’s Sudoku. This puzzle game, which
appeared almost overnight three years ago,
continues to gain fans. Although still a new
phenomenon, Sudoku has actually existed
for more than 1,000 years.
The game went through a couple hands
throughout the years. According to
www.chinaconnection.com, the Romans,
Arabs and Swiss all had a version of it
before the United States reinvented it in
1980. The game didn’t catch on in the States
until Wayne Gould, a New Zealander, wrote
a computer program that generated Sudoku
puzzles at several levels of difficulty. He
then sold them to newspapers in the U.S.
and Great Britain, allowing the game to
suddenly take off.
Many people find Sudoku a nice alterna
tive to the crossword puzzle.
“I actually see it as more of a challenge
than traditional crossword puzzles because
if you make a mistake it’s almost impossible
to fix,” freshman Kirsten Yarwood said.
“With crosswords you can just go back to
that word and change it.”
However, junior Hillary Stoker likes
Sudoku for a different reason. “I like
Sudoku better than regular crossword puz
zles because it doesn’t use words. It’s sim
ple numbers and I like that.”
For those who have never played the game
before, Sudoku consists of one large box
divided into nine even squares. Each of the
squares is then divided into nine smaller
squares.
The point of the game is to include the
numbers one through nine in each of the
larger squares. What makes the game diffi
cult is that each vertical and horizontal row
must also include those same numbers.
To start off, some numbers are already
filled in, so working around those fixed
numbers can be challenging. Depending on
the difficulty, Sudoku forces you to use
patience and logic.
Sudoku’s popularity spans not just news
papers or magazines, but also online. You
can download the puzzle from the Internet
as a Widget (for you Mac users) and on to
cell phones. There’s even a card game ver
sion involving several players. Online tour
naments allow people around the world bat
tle to complete a given puzzle in the short
est amount of time.
Freshman Danielle Rounds downloaded
Sudoku on her phone and likes to play it
when she’s “sitting around waiting for
something or trying to pass the time.” She
added, “I feel like I’m challenging myself.”
Sudoku is even more popular in Japan
than in the U.S., hence, the Japanese name
“Sudoku.” In English, the name means
“solitary number” or “count only one num
ber” referring to the instructions of the
game. Another name variation for Sudoku is
“Number Place,” and is often referred to as
“the new Rubix Cube.”
Even if you’re intimidated by math, these
are just small numbers and you don’t even
have to do simple addition or subtraction to
play Sudoku. And if you’re already into the
game, you won’t run out of puzzles any
time in the future because there are
6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 possible
variations. So go enjoy!
Contact Tess Kukovich at
pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.
Sudoku is...
~ A logic-based place
ment puzzle
- Japanese- The term
**Sudoku” is defined as
''the digits must occur
only once”
- Also referred to as
''Number Place” and
'‘the new Rubix Cube ”
Try a game of
Sudoku online at:
(includes easy-hard levels)
www.sudoku.com
www.websudoku.com
www.dailysudoku.com
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