Net News to introduce latest puzzle craze to Cayman

Tony Pitcairn, Net News IT Manager tries out one of
the sample Su Doku puzzles which has got the world
scratching their heads.

Wayne Gould

Wednesday,  July 13, 2005

With the drive to keep our readers constantly informed and also entertained, Cayman Net News is about to introduce the latest craze that is literally sweeping the globe.

On Friday 14 July Net News will publish its first Su Doku (or sudoku) puzzle grid on the ‘Comics’ page. This is the latest puzzle that has got everyone going crazy and even had the London Times saying the game had turned the UK “into a virtual crack house of number-crunching junkies.”

In a world of computer graphics and high technology it may come as a complete surprise that a simple puzzle that needs only a pencil, which originated in Japan, and is now appearing in newspapers everywhere has everyone gripped. But with national championships in the planning and people comparing notes on the worldwide web, the number puzzle has caught on in an unexpected way and by all accounts is pretty addictive.

The idea is extremely simple. It is a grid of nine rows by nine, split into nine boxes, each containing nine squares and it looks like just another numbers’ game, however Su Doku experts say it is different because it is played using logic alone, so mathematics phobics can tackle it too as there is no need to add, multiply or take anything away.

All you have to do is fill in the missing digits so that every grid has the numbers 1-9 included without repeating the numbers in the same vertical or horizontal rows – easy! Well apparently some are and some are not.

A lot of seriously addicted players are emerging in particular in the UK where the game now appears in four of the country’s national newspapers, and has people ‘tearing out their hair’.

Peter Levell, a vicar from Guilford in Surrey, has said he can keep his playing down to about three times a week with serious will power and added, “I know if I’ve got a busy day ahead I won’t even look at a difficult one, because once you are hooked into it you have to keep going.

“The easy ones I can now do in about 15 minutes, but more difficult ones can take a couple of hours and I just don’t have the time,” he said speaking to the BBC from his home.

For Bernard Stay, 71, however, from St Albans in Hertfordshire, the game is having a serious impact on his life, he said. “I would really like my life before Su Doku back!” he pleaded recently on a website.

“I never thought I had an addictive personality, but Su Doku is definitely bad for me. If I don’t complete a puzzle before noon I get suicidally depressed for the rest of the day and even lose sleep fretting on what I’ve missed.”

It was a retired judge, Wayne Gould from New Zealand who now lives in Hong Kong that seems to be the one to blame for this state of play as it were and the puzzle’s rapid spread.

He is pleased with the global growth of the game, to which he contributed by taking it from a puzzle book he bought in Tokyo in 1997. He currently provides them to newspapers in more than 12 countries from the United States to Slovakia, as well as now Cayman Net News.

Michael Mepham, a veteran puzzle producer said he had never seen anything like the fuss caused by Su Doku in the puzzle industry before.

“It’s just one of those things that catches on,” he said.

Look out for the first edition on Friday and make sure you control your addiction.

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