Sudoku Madness

Never guessed it might happen to me. One quiet lunch hour at work. Brain idling, getting up to mischief, googled S-U-D-O-K-U: curious - only curious - wondering what all the fuss was about - and tipped headlong into the Sudoku zone.

Free online Sudoku - And here’s the link to that great website: http://www.websudoku.com/.

All the very worst temptations - Free! - graduated difficulty - simple and non-threatening interface - so even I might handle it.

Finished my first ever sudoku inside fifteen minutes - despite the usual lunch time interruptions at work.

Innocently - believing I could stop anytime - that I didn’t NEED this in an unhealthy needful sense - well, I started another.

Then work, cruel and unrelenting taskmaster, dragged me away - but I had not hit that red-X - not shut the browser - only paused my puzzle, minimized the window, hiding it on the taskbar with Outlook Express Inbox, Word, and Excel.

All the remains of that hard Thursday I stole sudoku moments - ignorant - puffing on an inviting habit. Seven sudoku under my belt by day’s end.

I couldn’t get enough - I admit it - and did not care if I presented a glazed expression and if anyone did notice it when I surfaced to meet them.

Quickly getting that I could also have my sudoku offline, by the simplest of means - not even needing a printer - I took to copying the free puzzles onto the backs of junk faxes. Then strips and scraps kept handy round my desk for phone messages. So, by these devices I got my meager supply of sudoku at home.

Online, my puzzles came timed, and graded by time completed. Annoying feature. Time trials I expected, sometimes enjoyed, say playing Project Gotham Racing, or Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher racing the clock to de-fuse bombs in the belly of a ship. Why oh why would I want to race through sudoku? My sudoku should last - be like buttery smooth caramel - one good long chew!

So, contented somewhat, digested my low-tech puzzles at home. Of course there weren’t enough of them. Seated and comfy in the littlest room, often they ran out before I felt sated. Clearly, there would never be enough.

Sure, I could copy a free batch each day for every night -and there were sudoku books, even gamer handhelds with little displays, quite reasonably priced - however I was born frugal, the kind who writes on the clean side of a junk fax, and I couldn’t be reasonable.

Found at last a peg and board sudoku while exploring my neighbourhood toonie emporium: one-buck-fifty, and taxes. Made in China. Blue plastic board perforated in the nine-by-nine sudoku grid. One-to-nine times nine yellow number pegs: all intended to be twisted free and plugged into the board grid - and only for the moment nicely readable on one flat plastic twig frame, just like the fiddly parts trees in model boat kits.

Logically, saw that I would get just the first puzzle: frustration after, because after all eighty-one number pegs completed the sudoku, I’d have left me this empty, useless, twig frame - and for any more play have to set out eighty-one number pegs, in order, across a flat surface - and a rock-steady one.

Immediately after game one, only the once toyed with the stupid idea of picking out the numbers from the plastic honey tub I’d store them in. Maddening - impossible to play - rattling through my honey-pot random number generator - hoping chance will give the peg I want!

To solve the problem: Tore me a box lid roughly to size, trimmed it, made it presentable, jotted down the nine-by-nine grid, and with a big nail punched holes through it like a crib board for all eighty-one pegs.

Mounted the pegs, one though nine across, and nine rows down. Felt in that moment ready to play, content again, though only that moment, because the reality of the package blurb hit me, swift as Monday after the weekend, that this came with only the one hundred sudoku included.