A few weeks back, my mother told me that my father was into “Sudoku” puzzles. I hadn’t heard of them, and when she told me they were math puzzles, I mentally rolled my eyes and quickly forgot about them.

The next time I went home to visit, my father called me into his office and handed me a paper off his printer tray so fresh that it was still warm to the touch.

“Try it,” he ordered, “You can only have the numbers one through nine in any given line vertical or horizontal and each box of nine you can only have one of each number one through nine too.”

I whined. I hate number puzzles. I’m a WORD person. I don’t like math. But he said “I’m timing you, I did mine in 40 minutes,” — and I can seldom resist that sort of challenge.

So I started. And started over. And scratched my head. And finally — something clicked and it started coming together. And, I beat his record.

Now, a couple weeks after that day, I find that there are a number of Sudoku puzzle programs for the Treo. I had to buy one to try it out. Continue reading →