Sudoku-Cuckoo

Jill Medhus / Reporter

It's that mysterious crossword puzzle with numbers that showed up in your newspaper one morning. It's that grid that you find on gift boxes everywhere. It's Sudoku.

Puzzle books and hand-held Sudoku games were ubiquitous in department stores, bookstores and gift shops during the holiday season. Sudoku can also be found in newspapers nationwide, next to the time-tested crossword puzzle and on various Web sites.

The object of the puzzle is to place the digits one through nine inclusively in every single row, column and 3-by-3 box, filling a grid of 81 squares. It is simple to learn, but a challenge to fill in all of the squares correctly. One mistake can cause a chain reaction that makes every subsequent number wrong. This thrill makes the game an instant hit.

There are different difficulty levels of Sudoku puzzles. An easier puzzle can be finished by just about anyone within minutes, but harder puzzles may have a person staring for hours without being able to make a move. Before attempting the difficult puzzles, it is essential that one master the easier puzzles first.

All sorts of people solve Sudoku puzzles, including children, the elderly, working-age people and students here at Elon. Even before the holiday shopping craze, I saw some of my classmates completing puzzles on a daily basis.

The popularity of Sudoku recently began in England, when newspapers began to publish daily puzzles. The fever eventually crossed the ocean to the United States. Previously, it was popular in the mid-1980s in Japan after having been conceived in the 1970s.

Contact Jill Medhus at pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.

Alyse Knorr / Photographer
Sophomores Jackie Del Giorno and Patrick Morse race to solve Sudoku puzzles.

Alyse Knorr / Photographer
A completed Internet Sudoku puzzle.