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I think part of the appeal of Sudoku is that it mimics the thrills of more complicated puzzles and makes them more accessible. For one thing there’s the cascading effect you get from crosswords (an answer in one area aiding a solution in another), and also the moments of freefall momentum you get in the same, and also games like draughts (checkers) – bish bash bosh bash bish. There also seems to be a heightened sense of intuition at work in Sudoku. All options are equally apparent at once (unlike crosswords where the clues are separate from the playing space) and looking at the grid feels to me a little bit like taking in a chess board mid-play. The space isn’t processed mechanically (like lots of other logic puzzles) but as different overlapping groupings. You might start a game of Sudoku in a mechanical way (look for pairs, say) but soon you find yourself having hunches that a particular row or column or box looks weak and doable.
Of course, compared with crosswords, Sudoku is more about speed than completeness. And again, that feeds into the feeling that good intuition is rewarded over technique or knowledge. But I think their popularity has more to do with fact that a very simple computer programme can churn them out for next to nothing, and anyone can play them. They’re probably not as rewarding as more skill-based puzzles are for those who have developed those skills, but then I don’t think that’s the market they’re aimed at.
By the way Jack, when you talk about 'American-style' crosswords, do you mean synonym-based ones? We have those in the UK too, but do you not get the cryptic sort so much in the States? (I'm assuming that by cryptic you mean the 'This could be excrement, 4' type.) |
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