The Sudoku Craze
The country is in the grip of a craze. Everywhere—on the tube and trains in cafés and at home—people are obsessively filling in grids with the numbers 1-9 in each column, row and 3×3 square. I first came across one of these puzzles in the Times 10 days ago when visiting my in-laws and was immediately hooked. A few days later there was an item on Newsnight because the game of Sudoku (based on the invention of carrés magnifique by the great 18th-century mathematician Leonard Euler, according to Saturday’s Independent) apparently helps to sell papers. The Guardian carries a version that is ‘hand-crafted in Japan’ and the Independent, my staple, publishes three levels ranging from elementary to difficult. Every Saturday, they also publish a super version of a 16×16 grid comprising the numbers 0-9 and letters A-F. This I brought back with me when I arrived at our mates in Islington after my trip to Bilbao.
All night, they and John sat up, trying in vain to solve it (I tried and failed three times to solve the normal-sized version before giving up and going to bed) and John and S consequently spent most of Sunday writing a program that eventually cracked it. John is working out the system behind it. If successful he might enter the Independent’s competition to become Sudoku Grandmaster of Great Britain but I’m not getting my hopes up. There are people out there who can do this in their heads but a computer scientist, a mathematician and another mate who has a PhD in both were not among them. At least I’m not alone 🙂
Tags: Neither here nor there, Tag Index
Denni