You doku?
Because I have always been nerdy, I have done sudokus for years and years now — they used to be called Number Place (where place is, I assume, a verb), and I never much liked them — too easy. (Now I do the hard ones and also the weird shaped ones.)
About a year ago, my father got into them, which sort of surprised me. My father is a wonderful guy, but logic was never his strong suit. My mother got him a book of all easy ones, but he outgrew those fairly quickly, though at first he liked to do them occasionally to feel confident when he finished it in 2 minutes. He now does them at all levels, and has started doing the ones where they give you the sums of some boxes instead of initial squares.
My mother, on the other hand, though a logical person refused utterly to touch them. No interest! She likes her crossword puzzles and that is it. But one day my father got stuck on one of the sum ones, and I wasn’t there, so my mother took it and solved it and now she has started doing the normal ones (which she finds harder, oddly), though she is still on the easiest ones. She has weird solving strategies, ones that don’t quite make sense to me — and are probably inefficient, since she is still quite slow at them.
But I haven’t seen her touch a crossword puzzle since.
July 11th, 2006 at 11:29 am
I always see people on the train doing them on the way to/way home from work (they have books or they do the one that’s in the paper everyday). Personally, I stay far away from them. I remember being forced to do them in high school math classes - they were nightmare-inducing because I am so not a logical thinker.
July 11th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
I’ve considereed it but just can’t see the attraction. I love crossword puzzles, but those are about words. It doesn’t seem like it would be as interesting. Though based on your parents’ experience, perhaps I should try one.
July 11th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
I no doku. Cryptic crosswords for me. I prefer my logic puzzles with a large dose of whimsy.
July 11th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
The thing is, Nikki, I’d think your position would be more common. I continue to find it weird that they are so popular, but it’s nice to feel less nerdy, for a moment.
I like crossword puzzles because they’re only a little about words, mostly about trivia. I hate word puzzles of other sorts, which is why cryptic crosswords are not for me. I don’t play Scrabble, for instance.
If you do start, Shelly, start easy.
July 12th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Actually, it occurs to me that, even though I’m not interested in solving any individual sudoku puzzle, I would have a lot of fun solving sudoku in the general case. Writing a sudoku-solving program is much more my cup of tea than solving the things myself would be.