The Puzzling Challenge...or the Challenged Puzzler?

My dear husband insists I am secretly in love with logic puzzles. One quiet evening, as I am innocently reading a book, he bounds in from the computer waving a sheaf of papers and breathlessly asking me where we can find two pencils. Eyeing him a little suspiciously I procure the requested items, much to his enthusiastic, almost boyish delight.

"You have to try this!" he exclaims, a little flushed, flopping down on the couch beside me. He hands me a sheet of paper with a grid containing numbers and lines. Some numbers are missing. Some lines are bold, marking the small grid off not only by column and row, but by nine-square sections as well. Apparently he has found a 'math' game for me to try.

"No! Not math," he assures me quickly as he sees my eyes glaze and lip curl in distaste, "it's numbers, logic!" he says. Like this is going to make me feel any more relieved at the moment. His new-found brain-busting, self-esteem crunching game for his mathematically (and logically) challenged wife, is a real hum-dinger. It's a down loadable puzzle game called 'Sudoku', and to me, it represents all that is overwhelming about my inability to think linearly, logically, and even competitively. The goal of the game is supposedly clear. Enter numbers 1 - 9 in the squares so that the numbers are not repeated in any given column, row, or grid.

He happily trots over with my first try, a puzzle that has been rated 'medium' on the scale of difficulty. Sure. For whom? Cal-tech number crunchers? A government super computer? As for me and my overly emotional and creative self, I have now been asked to humiliate myself in front of my spouse who is clearly far superior with this kind of thinking.

I'd rather color in the boxes. Think of nine items to draw in each. Make up quilting patterns with the grid. Use the numbers to randomly think of shopping amounts to spend. Somehow I'm just not quite getting into the spirit of the whole thing. My husband is insistent in a spontaneous and childlike way, so I rally and attempt to tune in once more to his explanations of how to do it. My eyes are swimming in and out of focus as I stare at the grid of seemingly random numbers. Then he hits me with the final mental stressor. There's only ONE possible answer. One misplaced number sets off a chain reaction that causes all the other numbers to be wrong. He quickly shows me how to start seeing 'patterns' in the random digits that would preclude certain numbers from being written in those spaces. The knot of tension that was slowly building in my shoulders has grown to a full-blown cramp. Now I am under pressure to unlock the puzzle with the one, heretofore, undiscovered key.

It's all quite fascinating. If you have a gun to your head and a crazed mathematician threatening you, you might find the wherewithal to attempt to burn a few braincells on the thing. Out of respect for my husband, and his insistence that I would 'love' it...I tried. Really. For about ten minutes even. At first, I had that stabbing hope that I get when I start some unknown and previously untried activity...that I will somehow be a 'natural' reaching some unimagined proficiency and proving to be a prodigy. So far I have applied that hope to bowling, golf, painting, and a few other activities, all with the same results. Mediocrity, outright failure, or worse...bumbling unpracticed amateurishness. One-armed kindergartners bowl better than me. One-eyed, no-armed golfers can hit the ball while I swing the club consistently...into the ground, or an inch above the ball.

This puzzle proved to be no different. Within moments I was staring glassy eyed at the numbers I had placed so carefully and the holes in my logic made Swiss cheese look like 400 count percale. I found myself doodling around the borders. At first, just small designs. My husband was feverishly working on his puzzle, bright-eyed and practically smacking his lips in glee!

"Ah HA!" he chuckles, forgetting I'm even there, "here's the first number right already!" He shakes off his enthusiasm slightly to see how far I've got...and chuckles kindly but condescendingly at the fact that for all the numbers I do have filled in...the one that is right is blank. I grumble an incoherent remark and scrunch lower scribbling and erasing furtively for a few moments. Soon my pencil finds its way around and around the cube on the paper in a large circle, and almost of its own volition inserts a diagonal line bisecting the circle in the classic 'no smoking' sign. I have subconsciously signed off on the puzzle. As my eyes swim back into focus I feel the burden lift off my shoulders to be 'logical', intelligent, or even remotely interested in the game. I pick up my book again and lose myself in some empty brain-fluff once more.

Maybe I can't figure out how to make the numbers in the grid line up just 'so'...but thanks to years of reading...I can write about how un-fun it was in a way that will make someone, somewhere smile! Hey honey? Fill yer boots babe! May you become the Jedi Sudoku master! You go boy! As for me and my numerically challenged brain? I'll stick to Tetris and the occasional word game. I'll cheer you on with your logical puzzle solutions, and add up your numerical conquests...with a calculator of course.