However, the puzzles could just as easily be constructed from letters, abstract images When completed there can appear in each row,Ĭolumn, and three-by-three box (divided the same as a tic-tac-toe grid) only one of each symbol, typically the digits 1-9. It is a symetrical puzzle, typically a nine-by-nine grid. Within weeks, would be wise to avoid being seen writing vertically - the telltale sign that gave away the last crew.įor the benefit of Cyril and others not familiar with sudoku, it is a logic puzzle, not an arithmetic puzzle. But the next panel selected to try the case, which is supposed to begin anew Is the no-sudoku-in-court rule one of those black-and-white solutions? The jurors didn’t violate Australian law, media reports said. Other human-made puzzle - carrying it through from start to finish, and finding the perfect solution in the end, can produce a feeling of great pride. We jump into the middle of problems and muddle through as best we can.
Most of life’s challenges don’t have black-and-white solutions, and many have no resolution at all. In an essay on sudoku that seemed especially relevant to today’s news, Will Shortz, The New York Times’s crossword editor, wondered whether it was all really about control: The jury forewoman said the sudoku-playing commenced early on in the trial, “probably when the surveillance evidence was on.”īut something other than boredom may account for the puzzle-mad Australian jury. Not so the testimony in the Australian drug case, it would seem. The grids of these puzzles seem to shut down the mental apparatus, enclosing one’s faculties in a tightly constrained universe - a 9 by 9 array that mustīe carefully filled up with the numbers 1 to 9, following certain rules. When it comes to sudoku, there is no escape.
Back in 2006, Edward Rothstein of The New York Times offered a much different characterization of sudoku’s power to command attention: The court heard evidence in the case for 66ĭays, including testimony from more than 100 witnesses, 20 of them police officers.Īt the same time, the game can be more engrossing than the juror acknowledged.
#Ny times sudoku june 16th trial#
To be sure, the trial was a complicated one, the product of what was apparently a lengthy, complex investigation that yielded drug and conspiracy charges against two men. To maintain my attention the whole time,” she explained, according to The Associated Press.
The judge was apparently less than persuaded by her assurances that “it helps me keep my mind busy paying more attention.” After all, “some of the evidence is rather drawn out and I find it difficult She admitted to having spent more than half of her time in court playing the game. She said four or five jurors had brought in the sudoku sheets and photocopied them to play during the trial and then compare their results during meal breaks. Puzzle solving during the proceedings, according to The Sydney Morning Herald: Judge Peter Zahra made the decision to abort the trial and discharge the jury after the forewoman admitted to a prodigious amount of Two years later, the number puzzle, which has its own section on, has succeeded in spoilingĪ federal criminal case in Australia, wasting almost $1 million in the process. In one of the first major signs that the game had grown into a phenomenon, British Airways told its 13,000-strongįorce of flight attendants in 2006 that they were forbidden to play sudoku during takeoffs and landings. Say what you will about the performance of the airline industry - it was first to identify a threat in sudoku.
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