Revisit your Brain

About 2 months ago, my daughter Lorna introduced me to Sudoku, a new, highly addictive Japanese puzzle that virus-like is spreading rapidly over our entire planet.

While at first, I was tentative about trying the puzzle, in no time flat it has completely possessed me. I take it to bed with me and I become oblivious to the fact that my spouse is beside me. Actually, she has a Sudoku on her own clipboard and she refuses to be interrupted while she is busy writing and erasing.

As most of you know, I am in my early nineties and I am able to say, with a modicum of pride, that I never "inhaled" and I never sniffed cocaine or injected myself with heroin. I don’t even know what Ecstasy is except that it is a word that describes high levels of pleasure. But Sudoku? It is on another level. It has to be experienced, to be believed.

If you have been stirred by what you are reading, there are several options available. It can be done online where you can compete with fellow denizens on the Internet or you can download the Sudoku Challenge for a free trial and an eventual purchase of about $20. That is the option I used. I find it infinitely more convenient and "exciting" to do the puzzles offline on my own computer screen. The program even allows you to print the puzzle at various levels of difficulty so that you can do it at your leisure while not seated at your computer.

Go to Google and type in "Sudoku Challenge." With the flick of a key or two, you’ll soon have the puzzle on your computer and from then on, believe me, you will no longer be the same person. But I guarantee that those little gray cells in your cerebral cortex will come to life and keep you from becoming senile, prematurely.

I have heard on the grapevine, that an effort is being made in Iraq to get the insurgents to try it. We have also heard that Osama bin Laden is up to his ears with scraps of Sudoku worksheets. There's no more room in his cave. Up, up and away, folks ~ all you have to know is how to count from one to nine!