Sudoku puzzles go from geek to chic

Senior Anna Grimm awoke Christmas morning to find a book of Sudoku puzzles nestled in her stocking. \n"My family is big into math, We're kinda geeky like that," Grimm said.\nWhat might have previously been considered geeky could now be called geek chic as the logic puzzle most commonly known as Sudoku gains popularity across the nation through Web sites and newspapers' puzzle pages. (The Indiana Daily Student will begin printing a daily Sudoku puzzle in the Classifieds section Monday). \nThe premise of the puzzle is simple -- players must fill a 9-by-9 grid, separated further into 3-by-3 grids, with the numerals one through nine. The puzzle gets its difficulty because the same numeral may not be repeated in any column, row or 3-by-3 box.\n"I really like crosswords," said Grimm, who first saw the puzzle in her local paper, The Evansville Courier & Press, "but eventually I got bored with them. I kept seeing the same clues over and over again. Sudoku doesn't feel as repetitive."\nSudoku first appeared in a New York puzzle magazine under the name "Number place" in 1979. In the mid-1980s a Japanese puzzle company adopted the game and gave it a Japanese name that can be shortened to Sudoku, according to the January newsletter of the Mathematical Association of America. The puzzle eventually spread to newspapers in Europe and in May 2005 reached its peak in popularity when it was introduced to newspapers around the world.\nWhile anyone with logical reasoning ability can do Sudoku because it uses the same sort of logic as the popular board game Clue, said associate professor of mathematics \nWilliam Wheeler, mathematicians and logicians have an advantage because they are aware of the logical theorems that can be used to solve the puzzle. Wheeler said he could see using the puzzle in an introductory logic course to help illustrate these theorems.\n"I've given (puzzles) to students outside of class," said Alberto Torchinsky, professor of mathematics and an avid Sudoku solver. "I'm hoping to make those little gray cells become more active."\nBesides newspapers, puzzlers get their daily Sudoku fix online at Web sites such as www.websudoku.com and www.daily-sudoku.com, a site created by Ronen Azachi based in Israel.\n"I started the Web site thinking I would update it (with a new puzzle) on a month-to-month bases," Azachi said. "But I got so many e-mails from people who said they were waiting for their next puzzle that now it's daily."\nAzachi, an IT manager for an online booking company, created the Web site and the computer program that creates his puzzles as a hobby. He said he usually spends about an hour a day updating the site and reading e-mails from its 25,000 registered users from across the globe.\n"Thanks for the Sudokus," wrote a fan named Marie to Azachi in an e-mail from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. "I teach a class of learning disabled (ninth grade) students ... They love the easy ones as they are a real challenge for some of them (some can't do them at all)."\n"Since becoming a daily subscriber some six months ago, my wife and I had endless fun solving the Sudoku and really appreciate your regular e-mail. Have a great 2006 from us here in New Zealand," wrote Wayne Clarke.\nIf a puzzle has been created correctly, Wheeler said, there will only be one correct solution, putting the puzzle into a category of logic known as propositional logic.\n"That doesn't mean they're easy to solve," he said. "It just means there's an answer out there."\nThe puzzles range in difficulty from easy to evil, depending on how many numerals are given at the beginning of the puzzle, and it is this range that Wheeler said makes the puzzle so popular.\n"Because they are logic puzzles," he said, "people like to see if they can figure these things out. These are right at the limits of what people can ordinarily do. It's an interesting challenge because people can find their own level."\nBut it is the fact that Sudoku solvers know there is a correct solution that keeps them coming back to the puzzle each day.\n"If you follow the puzzle logically, you get the right result," Torchinsky said. "Unlike life, you follow the logical steps and you don't know what's going to happen. In Sudoku, there's a logical conclusion"