Sudoku

I am an addict! I have become addicted to Sudoku, the mind-challenging game that is now a craze among millions all over the world.

There are conflicting versions of how it all began. But at least everyone agrees that the Japanese have the trademark rights to the name Sudoku which means “a number in a single place”. There are now many versions of the game but the most common is the 9X9 grid of 9 small squares within each 9 bigger squares making an 81-square universe that I am familiar with. The basic rule of the game is to fill in one of each numeral from 1-9 in each small square, each row, and each column, without ever duplicating or omitting a numeral from each square, row or column. Some of the squares are already filled in, to give one a head start. The number of squares filled in varies in every puzzle; the easy puzzles having more numbers than the difficult ones.

Why Sudoku? In my case, I just do it to exercise my brain as I grow older. And I enjoy it. For others, they say because it makes short work of a long haul. For a traveler, it can kill the boredom of sitting in a literally long haul flight. For the short-tempered, it can ease the unpleasantness in a long queue while waiting for his turn. For the patient or their loved ones in a hospital room, it can heal the pain of expectation of the unknown.

In fact, it was in a hospital setting where a chaplain-colleague of mine introduced me to Sudoku while I was doing my CPE residency in Honolulu some two years ago. At first, we used it as a conversational piece while visiting patients during our hospital rounds. Soon patients and even their visiting families started doing the puzzles themselves. Sudoku helped them ease their pain and anxiety, they told us. Sudoku, I realized even then, is a therapeutic tool!

Today it has become a therapy for me too and not just a means to while my time away to await the day’s end.

Therapy or not, I have often asked myself whether Sudoku has not just wasted my time. Come to think of it, it has not.

First, I need the starting numbers to be in the right place; otherwise I can’t solve the puzzle. Like in life, I need foundations to live righteously. I need the pillar of values I hold dear to be there to hold me up for the rest of the life I am trying to live.

Second, Sudoku as a whole is a mini image of the divine order in nature and the universe. I mess up with it and I am in trouble. I can solve the puzzle only by following the rules.

Third, I must learn to be patient, to explore and analyze all dimensions of the grid – the nine individual squares, the horizontal columns as well as the vertical ones – to find the answer to the blanks in the puzzle that I have likened to the blanks and the unknowns in my life.

At the end of the day, I feel that my Sudoku addiction has served me well!