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puzzling puzzles

i like to do sudokus. i was excited to come to japan, home of the sudoku, and do authentic japanese puzzles with authentic japanese people. but no one here knows what they are. they mistook my love of sudokos as a general love of puzzles and gave me wooden blocks to arrange into shapes. yipee. in return i showed them a puzzle called IQ blocks (thanks jeff!).
anyway, i taught my host mom and dad how to do them. now we do them together. and i’m still determined to find sudokus in japan.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 6:02 pm and is filed under japan, life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “puzzling puzzles”

  1. Elfred Says:
    February 28th, 2006 at 2:08 am

    I remember reading that Sudoku’s are not actually Japanese, but who knows?

  2. Jeff Says:
    February 28th, 2006 at 2:26 am

    I was told by the asian cashier at the store that you can tell the future using the IQ blocks. The white cashier disagreed, saying that they were for ages 4 and up.

    I am not sure what this means, but maybe if you ask someone in Japan, they can look at the blocks and help you win the lottery. I request 10% finder’s fee, please.

  3. Jeff Says:
    February 28th, 2006 at 2:33 am

    One more thing:

    I went to Waterloo, and I took math, therefore I naturally assumed I was smart and that I could do number games. This was a stupid assumption. Despite previously having intimate knowledge of Fermat, Descartes, and both Taylor and Maclaurin, I found myself unable to complete a “Hard” sudoku.

    So I did what any mathie would do, and I tried a “devilish” one. Couldn’t do that either. Amazingly. So then I tried an “easy” one, so i could at least say that i did one….couldnt do that either. Naturally, my 20 year old brother did it in about 3 minutes.

    BAH.

  4. jenn Says:
    February 28th, 2006 at 2:27 pm

    From wikipedia:
    Although first published in a U. S. puzzle magazine in 1979, Sudoku initially caught on in Japan in 1986 and attained international popularity in 2005.

  5. Gil Says:
    March 2nd, 2006 at 4:59 am

    Wouldn’t someone who has studied math realize that sudoku actually has nothing to do with math? You could replace the numbers with any sets of symbols, shapes, colours, whatever.

    Jenn, forget sudoku. Seek out Japanese puzzle boxes. These things are incredibly complex and innocuous looking. The good puzzle boxes can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

    Here is a place that sells them so you can see what I’m talking about.

  6. Jeff Says:
    March 3rd, 2006 at 6:38 am

    Gil, I do believe you have stumbled onto the whole joke.

    Those puzzle boxes look interesting though.

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