Mathematics professor Bard Ermentrout pointed out that the puzzles don’t really require numbers or mathematical concepts, but are a special case of what’s known as a Latin Square that adds the requirement that each 3-by-3 box within the puzzle use the numbers 1 through 9 once. “I forced them into playing it,” he said with a laugh. “I know many of them played this,” he said, adding that the assignment was well received.īecause they had to test the assignment to ensure the solution worked, some could claim they had to play Sudoku for their classwork. Labrinidis modified the nine-by-nine Sudoku grid to a four-by-four square to prevent savvy students from simply copying an existing on-line Sudoku game. “The rules are easy, but the game is quite complicated to play,” he said. Students didn’t have to program the game itself, but needed to build a user interface that would allow moves to be made and to be undone on a modified Sudoku grid. Rather than opting for a tic-tac-toe game assignment he said could be boring, “I kind of rode the wave,” he said. In comparison, a search on “University of Pittsburgh” returned 38.4 million results and “Pittsburgh Steelers” turned up only 15.1 million.Īlthough Alexandros Labrinidis doesn’t work the puzzles himself, the Pitt assistant professor of computer science jumped on the bandwagon last semester with a Sudoku assignment for his mid-level web programming class.
#Washington post sudoku printable registration#
Some are calling the Sudoku craze the Rubik’s Cube of the 21st century.Įarlier this year, the Washington Post - one of about 140 daily newspapers that feature Sudoku puzzles - drew more than 7,000 entries for 200 seats at a Sudoku tournament in which the grand prize was a trip to London and a Union Station shopping spree.Īnd, capitalizing on the trend, Florida-based Challenge Me LLC is setting up 32 regional tournaments (including a stop in Pittsburgh July 22 and 23) each with 2,048 registration slots, in which organizers hope participants will pay $29.99 for a chance to go on to a national Sudoku tournament in Las Vegas next January.įor a better idea about the puzzle’s popularity, a Google search on the term “Sudoku” yields 68.9 million results.
(The name “Sudoku” is abbreviated from the Japanese phrase that means “the numbers must be single.”) The difficulty of the puzzle can be adjusted based on which and how many numbers already are filled in for the solver, who must use logic to complete the grid.Įverywhere, it seems, people are working the logic puzzles that appear in newspapers, on page-a-day calendars and in puzzle books with an enthusiasm that can border on addiction. Every row, column and box contains the digits 1 through 9 without repeating. The concept is simple: The Sudoku grid consists of three columns and three rows of three-by-three boxes. Sudoku is turning up in some unusual places on campus, not just with those who have some time to spare or in the hands of bored students in the back of a lecture hall.
Do you Sudoku? If the ever-rising number of pencil-clutching ponderers poring over the 81-square game grids is any indication, it seems as though nearly everyone does.
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