Sudoku

Some of my friends who are keeping track of this blog, for friendship sake or because they feel that not doing so will invite my wrath, asked me why I have stopped blogging. The fact is that I have suddenly become a sodoku addict.
This blog is dedicated for those of you who are still innocent of this addiction. Many things emerging out of japan (the country not the acronym) have taken the world by storm - electronics, cars, beyblades and now sudoku. It comprises of a grid of 81 squares in 9X9 format. This grid is further broken into 9 sub-squares, each comprising 3 rowsX 3 columns. The player has to fill numbers from 1 - 9 in these squares in manner that there is no repetition in each column, row or sub-square. Some numbers are provided randomly in the grid and the player has to fill in the rest. Obvoiusly, there can be only one solution or every combination. At the last count, there were about 10 billion combinations. The game has caught on fast and is staple diet for the entertainment page of every respectable daily newspaper. I prefer the web based sudoku which comes with its own timer. For a couch potato like me, solving one game within the given timeframe is far more satisfying than doing push ups.
For those of you who are getting sold to the idea of trying out sudoku, there are two websites that I would recommend:
http://www.websudoku.com
http://colinj.co.uk/Sudoku_solve/sudoku_solver.htm
The latter provides you with a solver which you can use to solve the difficult variants also.