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Su... Su... SUDOKU!
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The Japanese number game Sudoku is not only sweeping the Britons and Aussies off their feet but is inching ahead on our turf too. Take a look with SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
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The back page corners of the national newspapers are now filled with this brainteaser
GRAPHIC: Surajit Patro
Any mother would endorse this - if a child is silent for a while, he is into something that interests him no end.
But in Britain these days, even adults are silent. Not talking as much as they normally do. In local trains, in buses, at parks... places where you suppose din is the norm are under a hush lately.
And the storm behind the lull is - Sudoku.
Sudoku? Yes, you caught the name right. It is the latest Oriental export to the West in the form of a number game that by now has not only taken Britain and other parts of Europe in thrall, but is gaining rapidly even on far off-shores like Australia. At home and in public places, people can be spotted, absorbed in this 9 by 9 grid-based Japanese number game that appears in the daily newspapers.
India too
Even in Delhi, the craze is gathering momentum. The national newspapers now have their back page corner filled with this brainteaser of a puzzle. Though its lure is not yet as pandemic as in the West, it sure looks to be getting there. Blogging Indians can often be found discussing Sudoku, exchanging notes on which number rests where on the day's Sudoku. Some are even SMSing answers.
Says Chaitainya Dutta, a Delhi University student, "The game grows on you. Its seeming simplicity attracts you. You feel you can overpower it, but realise you can't. It becomes a challenge then. You don't want to leave your chair without solving it. It is a sure addiction." Though the crossword craze never got him, Sudoku definitely has. "We now often end up SMSing pals about it," he adds.
Comments Ajay Raj Singh, a retired bureaucrat from Kalkaji, "It can be a good way to keep an old man quiet. It hooks you because you feel the solution is round the corner, but you can't find it. I take hours to solve it, but I don't give up. It is a lot better than watching television."
People like Sujaya Banerjee from Chittaranjan Park even log on to the Internet for Sudoku. "There are now websites to give you tips. Some have even a month-long free trial of a software to guide you on it," she adds.
With the Chaitanyas, Ajays and Sujayas at play, it sure has the power to become a rage here any day. For that matter, look at Britain and even Australia.
A rage in Britain
The Telegraph, The Sun, The Guardian, The Times, Daily Mail, The Independent, Daily Mirror... in Britain, The Age, The Independent... in Australia are all jostling with each other to raise sales with Sudoku. Last November, The Times and The Daily Mail had a tiff on their claim as to who started the game first. The Times, it seems, had beaten The Mirror by just three days to claim the coveted crown!
The Times also gave readers the option to download it on mobile phones and published a Sudoku guide which has sold 1,20,000 copies. Even The Telegraph has a booklet. Treading a step forward, The Independent is soon to host a Sudoku championship. The Mirror claims, it arrests Alzheimer's disease! The Age gives away family theatre passes to the first few solvers of the day's Sudoku.
Its next hotspot is the U.S., where it is already creeping in. Sudoko is even doing the rounds of countries like Croatia.
Its birth
But how did it all begin?
It started as `magic squares' in the 18th Century by Leonhard Euler, a mathematician from Basel, Switzerland. It travelled to Japan only in the `80s with a Japanese publisher, who picked up a book on it in New York. In Tokyo, he `Japanised' it to become Sudoku.
And here, Ajay would be pleased to know, a retired judge from New Zealand, Wayne Gould, had picked up that version from a Tokyo bookstore in 1997. If you think he did it to keep himself occupied in the autumn of his life, you are wrong. Because Gould first knocked at the door of The Times office with it and is now raking in the moolah through his website sudoku.com
And if this rage continues in the West, it might soon be difficult to find a man there unaware of it.
But for the time being in India, there are still many so.
Says lyricist-poet Javed Akhtar, "I don't know much about it. The saying is, Jahan na pahuncha ravi, wahan pahuncha kavi. But here, it looks like, Jahan pahunche sabhi, wahan na pahuncha kavi!" Even actress Tanvi Azmi, a cryptic crossword pro, says, "I haven't heard people talking much about it in Mumbai yet. Though I have seen it in newspapers, I am yet to try it. I still can't get over the cryptic crossword. It is food for my brain, it increases my vocabulary." Tanvi's father Manohar Kher had long placed this love in her. "He takes classes on solving cryptic crosswords," she adds.
But Sudoku needs no classes. It is for the masses. At least it looks it.
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