A couple of years ago I devoted this column to a new puzzle craze, Sudoku. I crafted mocking comments about my spouse and son-in-law who were hooked on the crazy crossword-type puzzle that uses numbers one through nine to fill a grid of nine rows and columns without repeating any numbers. Sudokus come in levels of difficulty ranging from white belt ("easy") to black belt (the official "Do Not Attempt Unless You Are Albert Einstein" or "DNAUYAAE" level).
The nifty thing about Sudoku is that each 81-square puzzle comes pre-filled with numbers in a few random places to help get things started. "Easy" puzzles may have 30 or so squares filled in, which seems pretty friendly, right? That's how they hook you, folks, and like a lamb to slaughter you imagine you'll soon be Sudoku-ing with the best of them. Warning: Beware of the lethal "DNAUYAAE" level (see above) where they generously fill out, like, one square. You won't make it out alive.
Now it's difficult for people like me, a card-carrying member of the numbers-phobic segment of the population, to grasp how actual adults can sit for hours plowing through a series of empty squares, patiently filling in numbers with logically arrived-at answers. The Sudoku books merrily remind you that before beginning a puzzle to be sure to have - ha ha ha ha ha - "some free time ahead." Yeah - say 50 years to life for starters. I mean, for the numbers-phobic afflicted such as myself, gauging the time to solve a puzzle possibly involves the use of quantum physics.
Then one day I picked up my spouse's Sudoku book and noticed he'd left a few easy puzzles undone. My husband is a "math person" so of course he had catapulted himself into the rocket science league of Sudoku solvers in no time. So, like a little kid stumbling onto his dad's "adult" magazines, I began experimenting with Sudoku.
OK; so now I had a full-blown addiction on my hands. At first I hid my habit, but then I found myself on a road trip with my husband and my fingers were twitching to hold a pencil. My mind was darting back to the last puzzle I finished, remembering the sense of ecstasy at filling in that last number.
"Stop the car!" I yelled as we passed a Wal-Mart. Inside I fled down the aisles until I found the darned Sudoku puzzle books, selected a couple of new pencils, paid for my purchases and sheepishly climbed back into the car. "It's all your fault!" I grumpily admonished my astonished spouse.
Finally my addiction ran its course and I could get through a day without Sudoku. And that would have been the end of it had it not been for the fact that I had to have knee surgery.
Returning home from surgery with doctor's orders to lay low for awhile, I settled myself as comfortably as humanly possible with one leg sticking straight up in the air. That's when my spouse sidled up to me. Oh-oh.
Yes, the book he presented to me was a collection of Kakuro puzzles. And if you don't already know, Kakuro is Sudoku's evil twin brother. This is the Eddie Haskell of puzzles. Neat and tidy in its full-page crossword puzzle grid, the hard core truth is this: Kakuro is one shallow, sneaky-weasel puzzle. This puzzle is up to absolutely no good.
Like Sudoku, Kakuro employs numbers one through nine, which cannot be repeated in a row or column. The catch is the sum of the numbers must equal a number specified in a black triangle to its left (if a row) or directly above (if a column). Like you, I was already utterly confused.
To suck me in, my spouse whizzed through one puzzle while I observed. As strange theories rolled off his tongue like "unique sums" and determining the highest number that can be reached in four squares, whales were beaching themselves all over the world. Yes, my mate's lips were moving but all I heard was "blah-blah-blah ... "
"I'm not a math person," I reminded him shakily. "You don't have to be a math person!" he shot back, convinced I was following all of this number crunching. I mean, the stuff he was laying down on that page could have been the formula for sending man to Mars.
But, OK, I wasn't going anywhere for awhile with this knee so I picked up the dang book and took a stab at it. And - hey! This was cute: this row had just two squares and the sum was three and by gosh - the only combination was one plus two. Or two plus one. Then over here in this column was a 16. And - look at this! The only combination was seven plus nine. Or nine plus seven. And they tell you this stuff right at the back of the book and it isn't even cheating to look it up! Yipeeee ... how hard can this be? Right?
I got cocky. If six, seven, eight and nine was 30, what was 31? Of course!! It was all those numbers plus one. Right? Well, you'd think. By the time I finished the puzzle - a mere three days later, mind you, I was euphoric. Until I checked my work against the finished puzzle at the back of the book.
So to say my puzzle and the book's puzzle were a match is like saying Paris Hilton has joined a convent. Not gonna happen. I was so far off I wasn't sure if I was even in the right book. Oh, the pain. I felt like a swimmer at the Olympics who just learned my event had taken place last week in Mongolia.
I don't know when I made my first fatal mistake except I think it might have been when my hand picked up a pencil and opened that danged book of Kakuro.
Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill since 1983. Reach her at
GaleHammond@aol.com.
Gale Hammond Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at GaleHammond@aol.com.
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