The Brilliance!

I’m not sure why, but a few years ago I bought a little Sudoku puzzle book at an airport, probably to try something new to kill time. I epically failed and gave up that first day. I did however keep the book and it’s collected dust ever since. That was until a few weeks ago when I was on a plane with my younger brother and we busted out the in-flight magazine, flipped to the back, and found the puzzle pages. Apparently, and I didn’t know this, he’s been doing Sudokus like mad for the last year. Needless to say, it was a little embarrassing when he finished the ‘warm-up’ puzzle in about 6 minutes and I’d only filled in about 4 numbers and was ready to roll up 2 copies of SkyMall to jam in my eyeballs. Having your 19 year old brother be taller and much better dressed than you is one thing. Having him insult your intelligence by using basic number logic to fill in empty squares on a Sudoku warmup puzzle is entirely another. So I get back from my vacation and what do I do? Of course, I dust off the old Sudoku puzzle book and while I’m at it try to dust off my brain, apparently. So after forcing myself to figure out the different methods and techniques over this past week, I’ve officially become obsessed and actually quite decent at them. Much in the same way I have an obsession with Scrabble and at times can’t help but look at words in every day life and rearrange them…I’m now thinking in terms of rows of numbers. It’s odd, but it kind of feels good to use a part of the brain that hasn’t seen the light of day, maybe ever. So here’s to you, Sudoku puzzle book. Next time I’m with my brother he’ll never know what hit him.