Sudoku: The Next Generation
Electronic Gadgets, Web Sites
Spring Up to Stoke Craze;
Avoiding Fate of Rubik's Cube
The sudoku craze is getting a little out of hand.
British Airways recently issued a memo to its 13,000 cabin crew members reminding them that working on games like the popular Japanese number puzzle during takeoff and landing is prohibited for safety reasons. BA said the move was prompted by passenger concerns that crew members were doing puzzles.
But the movement continues to grow, and there is a mini-industry springing up to sell sudoku in a variety of new forms. A number of software makers are introducing versions for cellphones and personal digital assistants, including popular models made for Palm Inc. Retailers such as Discovery Channel Store are introducing hand-held electronic sudoku games, and board-game makers like Millburn, N.J., based Briarpatch Inc. are coming up with their own versions.
Web sites such as sudoku.com are offering premium services where players order an unlimited number of puzzles to play online for around $15. Other sites are also launching new twists, such as a two-player version from number-logic.com that allows players to compete head to head.
Sudoku is even showing up in math classes, thanks to a growing number of Web sites that make it easy for teachers to download age-appropriate versions of the puzzle.
The companies are betting that the new formats can continue to stoke sudoku's popularity in the U.S. and keep it from going the way of previous game crazes like Rubik's cubes, Tetris, and electronic solitaire. Although sudoku has long been worked on paper, as a game of mathematical logic, it is perfectly suited for a migration to digital devices, which can easily be programmed with simple formulas that keep generating puzzles. Also, it is easy to play on a cellphone touch pad and can played anywhere in the world without translation.
There are hints of a backlash, as some hard-core puzzle solvers are trying to cut back. Auren Hoffman, a 31-year-old entrepreneur from San Francisco, took two months off from sudoku after deciding that his obsession was hurting his productivity. Now he is playing again -- but just one puzzle a week.
After first catching on in Japan in the 1980s (its name is a Japanese word commonly translated as "only single numbers allowed"), sudoku quickly hopscotched across the globe. It was introduced in England a little more than a year ago. The New York Post -- owned by News Corp., whose holdings include several British newspapers -- brought the puzzle across the Atlantic last spring. More than a hundred U.S. newspapers now carry the puzzle and sudoku puzzle books are popping up on best-seller lists. The first sudoku World Championship will be held in March in Italy.
Hudson News Co.'s Hudson Group, based in East Rutherford, N.J., says that the puzzle's popularity has managers at its Hudson News stores -- which are in more than 50 North American airports -- rushing to restock pencils. They're also keeping sharpeners on hand for customers who can't wait to start scribbling.
The rules of sudoku are simple: Players fill in squares set in a nine-by-nine grid -- subdivided into boxes -- so that the numbers one through nine appear precisely once in each row, column and box. Part of its popularity stems from the fact that unlike its crossword cousin, sudoku requires neither encyclopedic knowledge nor a formidable vocabulary, making it a quick favorite among children and puzzle novices. Depending on the number and placement of the digits players are given to start with, puzzles range from easy to so complex that even mathematicians sometimes leave squares blank.
For the sudoku-weary, electronic and Web-based versions pose challenges that paper can't provide. They often offer a virtually unlimited number of games, more levels of difficulty and the ability to compete with other users. Finding newspaper puzzles too easy, Stephanie Lung, a 23-year-old from New York City, turned to the Internet. Ms. Lung, who works for the division of student affairs at Columbia University, found a sufficiently challenging "evil" puzzle off Websudoku.com and plays puzzles she prints off the site several times a week.
Companies say they are seeing strong interest in their mobile sudoku games. Howard Tomlinson, chief executive of mobile-game maker Astraware Ltd. estimates that there are dozens of different versions of mobile sudoku -- roughly 20 or so for Palm and Windows Mobile devices alone. Astraware's sudoku game, which costs $19.95 for billions of puzzles, is currently the eighth most popular of some 20,000 software downloads that are available for Palm devices.
While Astraware's software is geared towards pricier multipurpose gadgets, Sudokumo.com recently launched a mobile sudoku game that can be downloaded to most cell phones. The company, based in Guildford, U.K., says they have sold 7,500 games world-wide and are seeing growing interest from the U.S. Unlike the standard print sudoku, Sudokumo's mobile sudoku, available in packages of 10 puzzles for $2.50 or 30 puzzles for $5, has tutoring tools that help players identify the correct answer or tell them when they've entered the wrong one.
Briarpatch's board game, which is expected to be shipped next month, aims to solve a common complaint by players that they have to erase their guesses. It uses double-sided tile pieces that can be easily removed or stacked. Players use pieces of one color to set up the board to match a puzzle that appears in the game booklet -- or any puzzle they find in the paper. They then solve the puzzle with numbered tiles of the opposite color. The game, which will retail for around $20, is designed for travel with a tile-storing drawer.
Web sites where players can play and print puzzles, receive online help and trade tips are attracting millions of viewers as major newspapers post Web-based versions on their own sites. Sudoku's online migration is even launching the puzzle into classrooms. Marsha Ratzel, a 50-year-old math teacher at Leawood Middle School in Leawood, Kan., often breaks out sudoku puzzles she has printed off Edhelper.com. She says the site -- which sells sudoku-inspired puzzles that use pictures instead of numbers to help children identify, for example, endangered species -- has given her access to sudokus appropriate for all skill levels. Ms. Ratzel says she uses sudoku to teach her students how to approach a problem logically. "Sudoku helps them structure their thinking."
Still, the puzzle is already facing competition from a cohort of new Japanese puzzles, like kakuro, which some players find more rewarding because they require slightly more skill. And some players say they need to cut back in order to re-engage with society. Melissa Tanner, a 24-year-old psychology graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., says her sudoku addiction has begun to irritate her boyfriend. When she pulls a puzzle out, "he just rolls his eyes," she says. "I'll try not to do it as much when we are hanging out so I can pay more attention to him."
数独：让人如痴如醉的日本游戏
对填数游戏数独(sudoku)的狂热已经有些失去了控制。
英国航空公司(British Airways PLC)最近向其13,000名乘务人员发出备忘录，提醒他们：出于安全原因，严禁在飞机起降期间玩包括数独在内的游戏。英国航空表示，做出此举是因为乘客担心乘务员会玩这款填数游戏。
但这股热潮仍在不断升温，围绕这种游戏已生成了一个小小的行业，销售各种新形式的数独游戏。众多软件开发商推出了手机和包括Palm Inc.各种流行款式在内的个人数字助理(PDA)版本的数独。Discovery Channel Store等零售商正在销售掌上数独游戏，Briarpatch Inc.等桌面游戏生产商也推出了自己的游戏版本。
sudoku.com等网站提供了周到的服务，玩家可以用15美元左右的价格在网上不限量地进行数独游戏。其它网站还推出了新的对抗游戏，如number-logic.com的双人版可以让玩家彼此一较高下。
由于越来越多的网站让教师能够很方便地下载到适合不同年龄段的游戏版本，数独甚至出现在了数学课堂上。
这些公司坚信，新出现的各式各样的数独会继续提高它在美国的受欢迎程度，而不会像魔方(Rubik's cubes)、俄罗斯方块(Tetris)等风靡一时的游戏那样转瞬即逝。尽管数独长期以来一直是作为数学逻辑游戏在纸面上进行，但却可以用简单的程序编制出来，非常适合于移植到数码设备中。而且，这款游戏用手机键盘就可以轻松操作，无需翻译就能在全球各地进行游戏。
但也出现了一些退潮的迹象，原因是一些铁杆游戏迷希望变得有所节制。31岁的旧金山企业家霍夫曼(Auren Hoffman)就有两个月的时间没玩数独，他认为痴迷于此款游戏影响了他的工作效率。现在他又开始玩数独了，不过每周只玩一次。
自上世纪80年代首次在日本开始流行后（sudoku这个日语词一般可翻译为“只能填个位数”），数独迅速风靡全球。1年多前，它被引进到英国。新闻集团(News Corp.)旗下的《纽约邮报》(The New York Post)去年春季将这款游戏带到了美国。目前有一百多家美国报纸刊登数独游戏，与此相关的书籍也进入到畅销书行列。首届数独世界锦标赛今年3月份将在意大利举行。
Hudson News Co.旗下的Hudson Group称，这款填数游戏的风靡让其Hudson News商店的经理们增加了铅笔的进货量。他们还要在手边为迫不及待准备填数的消费者准备好铅笔刀。Hudson在北美的50多家机场设有商店。
数独的规则很简单：玩家在一个9格＊9格的正方形──这个正方形被划分成9个3格＊3格的小盒子──填数，要求每一列、每一行和每个小盒子都包含1-9这9个数字。数独受欢迎的原因之一是，同类似的填字游戏不同，它既不需要丰富的百科知识，也不要掌握大量的词汇，这使其能迅速为孩子和初学者所接受。根据游戏开始时的方格中已有的数字和位置，数独难易程度不同，有些复杂的甚至令数学家也不能完成。
对于数独迷而言，电子设备和网上的数独具有纸面游戏无法比拟的挑战性。它们一般都提供了基本没有限制的游戏数量，更多级别的难度，并能同其他用户进行比赛。23岁的Stephanie Lung感到报纸上的数独游戏过于简单，于是就开始到网上进行游戏。Lung是哥伦比亚大学学生事务部的职员，她感觉Websudoku.com上的游戏很有挑战性，每周都要玩上几次她从这个网站上打印下来的游戏。
公司说，他们发现对移动数独游戏的兴趣越来越大。移动游戏开发商Astraware Ltd.的首席执行长汤姆林森(Howard Tomlinson)预计，移动数独游戏的版本多达几十种，Palm和Windows Mobile设备版本的数独游戏就各有20种左右。Astraware的数独游戏──19.95美元可获得数十亿个拼图──目前在适用于Palm设备的两万多个下载游戏中排名第八。
尽管Astraware的软件主要面向高价的多功能产品，但Sudokumo.com最近推出了移动数独游戏，能够下载到大多数手机中。这家位于英国的公司表示，已经在全球卖出了7,500套数独游戏，而且来自美国的兴趣还在增加。同标准的打印数独游戏不同，Sudokumo的移动数独游戏具有辅导工具，能够帮助玩家鉴别正确答案，或告诉他们的输入是错误的，价格是2.50美元10个拼图，或5美元30个拼图。
Briarpatch的纸板游戏卡预计将在下个月上市，旨在解决玩家们普遍抱怨的擦去所猜测数据的麻烦。它采用了双面瓷片，可以很容易地去掉或叠加。玩家用一种颜色的瓷片按照书中或报纸中的样式组成原始图案。然后，就可用反面另一种颜色的数字填充。这种游戏卡带有一个装瓷片的容器方便旅行时携带，全套售价约为20美元。
能够参与和打印游戏内容，获得联机帮助和游戏技巧的网站吸引了数百万玩家，各大报纸也在其网站上发布了网络版游戏。数独被移植为网上游戏后，甚至进入到课堂中。堪萨斯州Leawood中学50岁的数学教师拉采尔(Marsha Ratzel)经常会用到她从Edhelper.com上打印的数独题。她说，这个网站使她能够获得适合于所有难度级别的数独题。该网站出售受到数独启发的迷题，比如，用图形代替了数字帮助孩子们认识濒临物种。拉采尔说，她用数独教育学生如何有逻辑性地解决问题。“数独能帮助学生组织他们的思维。”
不过，数独已经面临著kakuro等许多日本新的填字游戏的竞争。一些玩家认为这些新游戏更能带来成就感，因为它们的技巧性稍高一些。还有一些玩家表示，他们需要减少玩的时间，以重新融入到社会中。美国大学(American University) 24岁的心理学研究生坦纳(Melissa Tanner)说，她对数独上瘾已经惹火了男友，每当她拿出一个数独题，他就阴沉著脸。她称，“当我们在一起时，我会尽量不玩数独，以免他受到冷落。”
