(Untitled)

[dherblay]

I'll probably be alone in considering this the most important article of the day.

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

I shall be sticking to crosswords. Sudoku seems to me to belong with other Taylorist pursuits like American football; entirely lacking in charm.

[dherblay]

I find that there needs to be some requirement of inductive reasoning to keep me interested in a sudoku; most straight sudoku puzzles, and just about all newspaper sudokus, are solved through deduction alone, so I've moved on to obscure variants such as "Greater-Than-Killer Sudoku" and the like. Of course, once I get the trick of a variant knocked, it becomes as dull as the original.

[atpolittlebit]

I've been having more fun with the kakuro puzzles.

[randomways]

To be fair, some of the harder "straight" sudoku puzzles have a point where they become more chess-like -- you have to think two or three or four moves ahead because there's no place that you can definitely put a given number.

[etrangere]

I hate Sudoku. Every time I see people playing that in the subway it makes me feel like I'm surrunded by zombies. Scary !

[dherblay]

We're coming to eat your brains!

[cactuswatcher]

I got some sudoku puzzles to take on the trip. Also logic problems. Can't help it. I'm not much of a crossword fan.

[dherblay]

I wonder why I never see very many good cross-number puzzles. I mean, even GAMES publishes one only every several years.

[cactuswatcher]

Dell is publishing a magazine of them under the Kakuro name. I got the first issue and after the first few dozen they were insanely difficult. I guess the trick is not to make them impossible.

[randomways]

It's all about priority. Every afternoon, I do the crossword first, the sudoku second, and the cryptoquote (often the hardest of the batch) third. That's in order of preference. Then I read the comics and maybe, if I have a chance, find out what's happening in the world. But only if I feel like I might care.

[dherblay]

I don't get a regular cryptoquote. Well, actually, the only paper that I get delivered these days is the Times, so I don't get anything other than the crossword. But I wouldn't mind the cryptoquote, or the Scrabble puzzle. I do, however, get the Jumble! Man, the headaches I get matching wits against the Jumble . . .

[dherblay]

Oh, wait, that comment doesn't make any sense. The Plain Dealer, delivery of which is currently on indefinite vacation suspension, lacks a cryptoquote and the Scrabble puzzle, but does have the Jumble. The New York Times does not in fact have a Jumble, other than Maureen Dowd's writing style.

[randomways]

My dilemma is that The Detroit Free Press has much better comics, but no cryptoquote, while the Detroit News has horrid comics (and lamentable politics) but a regular cryptoquote plus a cyclic string of daily alternative puzzle. Both have crosswords and sudoku. The jumble is only in the News as well, and I do that on occasion (we are speaking of the one with 4 jumbled clues and a "punnish" answer to a final question, no?) My problem is that I'll get the answer first and then suffer the dilemma of whether doing the actual jumbles is a question of intellectual integrity.

And Heh! on Maureen Dowd. I've had similarly disapprobationary thoughts about her logic skills.