Diabolical Sudoku Master!

A couple weeks ago I stopped in Brookline’s Booksmith to pick up a remaindered book for Vic to inspire him towards de-cluttering. Of course, with the nerd weakness of incessant reading, I had a look around the new books. There, brightly lit, were a stack of little books all promoting the “Newest craze sweeping the nation!” and “The it-thing for it-commuters!”

“Who cares about crosswords?”

I’d never heard or seen this puzzle before. For mere $6.95, I brought home a flimsy book, “Sudoku! The Wordless Crossword: Vol 1.”

My obsession for the past two weeks has been a box of nine squares within nine squares. Hesitantly learning the tricks of the trade and flubbing even the simplest puzzles, bleary-eyed I kept at it to the detriment of domestic bliss, eating, and reading. As the puzzles became harder, time simply disappeared into a dark smudge of graphite.

I AM A DIABOLICAL SUDOKU MASTER!!!

The other day, I found myself explaining sudoku to a curious, but wary, seventy year-old man who had been sipping martinis next to us in a bar. I knew that perhaps I’d crossed to the dark side when I pulled one of the puzzles I’d been tearing from the pages of The Metro from the leaves of the book and handed it to him, “Try it, please.”

Having completed the Vol 1, I ripped it apart and took it to the recycle bin. The original plan was to rush to the store and acquire Vol 2…though I’ve decided that am taking my life back and will resist until my next flight. I admit I maybe slightly behind the curve of this fad, as a brief search on the Internet reveals “Sudoku for Dummies: Vol 3” and some blogging kid in Northwest Australia who is 15, claims to be God, and is rather pissed off at the idea that one might have to guess to solve diabolical sudoku.