On Holiday from Blogging; and, Evil, Time-sucking Games

I'm taking a break from blogging today, especially after yesterday's marathon session in which I blogged to all nine of my blogs.

Of course, I feel this is significant enough that I have to blog about it.

Am I a sick kitty, or what?

Of course, if I'm not blogging, reading, knitting, or beading, I'm almost certainly reading blogs. Which is how I found the subject of part two of this entry.

Don't ask me how I found this blog to begin with - it was almost certainly a link off of yet another blog I read. But I was intrigued by this post where the writer describes a Japanese logic puzzle game I hadn't heard of yet, Sudoku. (From the sound of things, some of you in larger cities may have heard of this already, as it seems to be published in many newspapers.) I followed her links to this online version of the game, and tried it out.

I was dead meat. Instantly hooked. A weak, pathetic fish flopping on the line. The game board is a 9x9 grid, sub-divided into 9 smaller 3x3 grids. There is only one rule - Fill in all blank cells making sure that each row, column and 3 by 3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9. Depending on the difficulty level of the puzzle, you are given more or fewer filled in numbers to start from.

The original poster had mentioned a Palm OS version, but I have an older Palm Vx, so I didn't follow her link. Instead, I googled the game myself. And found multitudes of pages about the game in various forms, from online to paper-and-pencil. Online aids to help solve. Pages where people discuss solutions and strategies. Online versions of the game, Windows versions, versions for every handheld you can imagine. Web sites for Japanese Puzzle Book publishers. (In English, but the books are in Japanese!)

I sifted through the information, partly with the aid of the Wikipedia entry. Eventually, I came up with this freeware version for Windows 9x, 2000, & XP. I've tried it on both my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 4150) and my desktop (a Dell Dimension 8200) with great success.

I am still evaluating the versions for the Palm Vx. The first one I tried out crashed every time I tried to access one of its functions, so I've ruled it out. I'll report here when I decide if any of them work on my admittedly out-of-date PDA.

Meanwhile, proceed to the other Sudoku links at your own risk. I take no responsibility for addiction, time lost, and other hazards!