You should read this article! http://www.nymag.com/arts/all/features/17244/index.html

Baloney, Tom. The value in Sudoku is mechanical: you "run a program and enter a weight value to determine how many squares remain blank (with that value lying in the range [solvable-solved))" without actually doing those thing, or more importantly, without recognizing you're doing those things. It's a reasonable way to spend one's time while waiting for the Red Line or for someone to meet you for happy hour (that's when I do them, after I've given the crossword a shot).

After some time Sudoku loses its challenge, sure, but in the class of mechanical puzzles, Tetris is the only one I know that distinguishes itself on this score.

Well, the weight thing was for puzzle creation, not solving. Click through that instructables link for the solving algorithm.

But I get your point. But I think Tetris succeeds because there's a time limit. It's more like a neverending stream of tiny little puzzles that must be immediately solved than one large one. And because you don't know what pieces are coming, there's an element of guessing and luck. Eventually folks figure out heuristics to help them play, but it takes a while. There's a necessary element of dexterity, too.

Sudoku's solving algorithm becomes obvious pretty quickly (it's basically spelled out in the rules); it's just one large, tedious puzzle; and there are no surprises as the solution unfolds. They might as well just print an empty grid and say "color this in to form a checkerboard" — it's busywork. I'd rather do the jumble, for god's sake.

You know, I never paid attention to the Sudoku craze or read the "rules" or whatever, so when I got a book of it awhile back, I actually started playing it exactly like that guy you linked to - just plotting out the numbers, and I couldn't help but think, "This is so fucking stupid." When I realized you're supposed to close your eyes and pretend it's a logic puzzle, it seemed slightly more entertaining, but now I only play it when I'm drunk and waiting for the metro on a weekend night. Drunk Sudoku, I can get behind.

It's hard to fault any game that gets Americans to exercise their noggins, but to the extent that Sudoku acts as a crossword substitute, I think it's bad for cognition. There are an incredibly large number of words and quasi-words available for use in crosswords, many of which have multiple meanings. This means that completing a crossword is a learning experience, in which new knowledge is introduced, for even the most practiced crossworder. Sudoku may sharpen the mind, but it doesn't teach.

As someone who believes that increased vocabulary is a prerequisite for deeper thought, the shift toward Sudoku comes as a double loss.

I'd rather do the jumble, for god's sake

Them's mighty strong words to be throwin' around, tom. (And I agree entirely.)

I'm with Kriston on this one, Tommy. It seems like your main gripe with Sudoku is that... you can solve them. And crossword puzzles are better because sometimes you can't. That is, if you don't know the right word there's no simple, deductive way to figure it out.

I'm not about to defend Mr. Shortz or anyone who's sunk money into Sudoku books, but you're setting up a pretty silly set of criteria by which to judge idle time-killing games. By this logic, jigsaw puzzles are bad because as time goes to infinity they will definitely be solved, whereas solitare is good, because following some algorithm doesn't always yield success.

You make it seem like Sudoku is an opiate of the lesser mind, but I think you just don't like numbers that much.

It's not the puzzle's ability to be solved that makes it lame (although jigsaw puzzles are terrible). I enjoyed doing the cav daily crossword puzzle back in college, for example, even though it wasn't very difficult. And I certainly didn't enjoy it *more* on the not-infrequent times when the author fucked up and produced an unsolvable puzzle.

My problem with Sudoku is that it requires the same skill to be used over and over, in a very predictable way. Crosswords require that you think about the clue from as many angles as possible, and there's no definitive set of steps that always guarantee success.

There's probably something to your last point — I like crossword puzzles because I like words. But my dislike of Sudoku has as much to do with how I feel about numbers as Sudoku itself does — which is to say, not much. The game could just as easily be played with any set of 9 symbols. I'd still find it pretty tedious.

I'm with Tom. Every time I see a Sudoku puzzle, I think "this looks like an assignment I would give to my students when I was a TA". If I can write a computer program to solve a puzzle, it's not worth my time. (This is the same principle that ruined Clock Solitaire for me. After I assigned that to my Data Structures students and realized how solving it could be completely boiled down to a predictable algorithm, it lost all appeal.)

I'll be the first to admit that Sudoku has some problems, but personally, I think crossword puzzles - at least in their common NYT form - are flawed as well. There's too much trivia and not enough vocabulary. I get frustrated when people hold up the crossword as some gold standard of time-wasting devices... how is rotely plodding through a Sudoku any less intellectually stimulating than rotely writing out the names of actors in movies you've seen?

Anyhow, disputes around my workplace are increasingly being solved by one-on-one Sudoku races... next time you and Charles have dishes to do, try it out. You've got enough computers.

But if you're going to start badmouthing jigsaw puzzles we should probably just let the issue go. I might go crazy and headbutt your ass.

hey, would it be a deal-breaker if someone you guys dated actually enjoyed sudoku?

I was just wondering if you had seen this? Also, as per Jeff's suggestion, I will destroy you in a time Soduko battle!