The Columnist Manifesto

come play on line backgammon or scrabble with me instead!

wpk

(p.s. just finished the torts exams. whoooo hoooo!! and for the record, students at the law school here at america's so-called officially coolest university turn out not to be any sharper than the ones back home at your home town law school.)

ztuheh -- zut! uh... eh! (a quebecois confused over whether to be french or canadian)
 

In the long run, Sudoku is not that addictive. Here's why.

1. When you complete a puzzle correctly, all you see is a box filled with 81 numbers, with no real idea of how you did it. It's not quite the same payoff as a finished crossword.

2. If you stop working on a Sudoku puzzle and pick it up later, it's hard to retrace what you've done so far and continue.

3. There's no equivalent to "What's a seven letter word for condom?" in Sudoku. If someone offers help, they need a few minutes to look at the thing.

4. In the occasional event that you mess up, good luck figuring out how to correct your missteps without starting over.

That said, Sudoku is not a bad way to pass the time. I recommend the ones offered free at usatoday.com, especially the ones earlier in the week. They're printable, but if you do them online, you can mark each empty square with possible numbers before deciding what number goes there. That way you don't have to re-enact your thought patterns.

hnogr (hen-OGRE): an ugly female chicken.
 

Neel -- nice find on the 7-letter word thing. Surprising how many accidents the Times has had with condoms.
 

I'm with Neel. Sudoku can take away a good mood in a minute if you make a mistake. Go with something more meditative. If you need to kill time -- blog more.
 

Or comment more.
 

Commenting. Yes, you rarely do that.
 

Let it blow over. I have three Sudoku books in my house that are all 99% empty. I much prefer the crosswords. Neel's reason is right on...

dplfoai... I have no idea