I have been reading a lot lately about people emerging from their pandemic cocoons and struggling to get back to a sense of normal. Sometimes this struggle means rejecting the world we once thought was normal. Should we spend more time outside with friends? Yes. Should we return to inviting the birthday person to spit on their birthday cake before we serve it to the group? No.
Blowing out birthday candles was always a bad idea. How did we not see that?
We are experiencing multiple kinds of anxiety about returning to society. We worry about managing the risk of COVID despite getting our vaccine, wondering if we can trust everyone in this grocery store to be telling the truth about their own vaccination. We wonder if we will remember how to socialize. Do we hug? I think we hug.
Sometimes this struggle means trying to determine if we are depressed, or languishing, or if we have simply been dormant.
And really, if the best possible resolution of the internal conflict is that we are dormant, we’re not in a good space.
So how do we get out of it?
The same way we get out of every funk. We intentionally do something new and different, like learn a new game.
Learn a New Game: Sudoku
This brief history of the game at Sudoku.com explains that the game of Sudoku was popularized in Japan in 1984. 18th century Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler invented it, but the form really flourished among bored commuters in Japan.
Conveniently, if you speak Japanese, the name of the game is from a longer phrase that basically means “you can use each number only once.” Naming a game for its only rule really shrinks the instruction manual.
Years ago, the sudoku wave hit the United States. I tried it. I found it too challenging. I moved on.
I made the mistake at the time of thinking of it as a math game. As an English / words kind of guy, math and numbers held no appeal.
I was young, and growing in my career, and I needed to specialize, not generalize.
Now, more than a quarter of a century later, writing for a living instead of teaching, I found myself stuck.
I was in a rut. I could not get started writing. I was uninspired by my content. I wasn’t finding joy in my daily routine. Instead I found many days tedious. For a while I floated on like this, taking comfort in the fact that the whole world had largely entered a similar state. While I was not moving ahead as I might usually, there was solace in the idea that I was not falling behind by stopping.
Things changed when the vaccine became available. Seeing an end to my own quarantine, standing in line for my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine, I resolved that I had to find a way to break out of my pandemic-induced stupor.
So I committed to several different habits and activities. One of these was getting better at Sudoku. (I almost said “mastering” but that is not where I set the bar.)
If you’re new to Sudoku, the rules are simple: you can use each number only once.
Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. Examine the board below:
When you “win” the game, each row will contain the numbers 1-9, but only once. Each column will contain the numbers 1-9, but only once. And each “box” – the 3×3 partitioned squares that make up the larger grid will contain the numbers 1-9 … but only once.
And the puzzle makers provide bread crumbs and clues; they strategically fill in some of the squares, and they set snares along the trail of your adventure. In this way they set the board so that each game is different. They can make it easier or harder by selecting which numbers or clues they leave in and which ones they take out.
Sudoku made simple
When I initially explored sudoku, I made the mistake of thinking of it as a math game. I even kept that language in my description above.
However, it is not about math at all. Each game of sudoku is a logic puzzle. And the levels – typically easy, medium, and hard – correlate to the number of hints you are provided to figure out the answer.
Think of the puzzle maker as a dungeon master, providing subtle (or not so subtle) clues to guide you through a puzzle. Here’s a recent “easy” level puzzle from the NY Times:
Note the highlighted square.
See if you can figure out what number should be there. I’ll wait.
While we wait, I will tell you about a really hard sudoku puzzle. The world’s hardest. This sudoku puzzle is so famous, it has a name. “Al Escargot.” As always, the puzzle maker enjoyed a joke with his puzzle, naming it after himself (Al) and a snail, which is suggested by the shape of the puzzle. What makes it hard is that there is not a single direct clue, but instead the player must consider 8 different casual relationships to fill in the first number.
Eight.
That’s very different from what we need to consider in our easy puzzle above, where the answer is [6]. And we can figure it out from several very direct relationships.
We know this because across we have [2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9]. Sure, they don’t appear in that order, but I find it’s easier to think of them in order. So the yellow space must be from the set [1, 6, 8]. Remember, the row should have “each number from 1-9, but only once.”
So we have some other places to look for clues. When we look in the box, we see that there is already an 8. So now we are left with [1, 6].
Finally, when we look in the column, we see [1, 3, 5, 7, 8].
When we remove the overlapping options [1] from our remaining set, we are left with [6].
See? We did not add or multiply. We’re not invoking Planck or Avogadro. We didn’t do math, we used logic.
For me, understanding these as logic puzzles really added to my willingness to get better at them.
Why games?
When I taught English, I worked to help my students understand how each lesson could improve their everyday lives. I found this was harder with comma rules than it was with great literature, even though most people think it’s the other way around.
The rules you learn, and the characters and situations which you encounter in literature, should be compared with your own life. You should learn the lessons they learn, and perhaps even some that they don’t. And in your own life, as in sudoku, you need to use logic on a daily basis.
Playing games helps you imagine and examine new options, and better deal with common situations.
Getting better at seeing relationships – even if those relationships are between numbers and not people – will help you as you navigate the problems that you will inevitably encounter during a routine day.
It helps you imagine and examine new options, and better deal with common situations.
Did a person not show up for a meeting with you? Does that mean they hate you, or meant to hurt you? Maybe, but there are other options too. A schedule conflict, an accident or emergency of some sort, or even an innocent (if hurtful) neglect are also possibilities. Being able to explore and examine these options can prevent you from becoming overly emotional in your response and perhaps damaging your relationship.
That is, by playing out various logical solutions – a skill you get better at by playing games – you are able to manage common situations more fluidly.
We also play games to increase our ability to concentrate. I find this is especially true with sudoku. I’m not great at it. I’m reminded of my not great-ness every day because my wife is pretty good. She routinely takes half as much time as I do to finish the NY Times sudoku on the “easy” and “medium” levels. Then she does the “hard” level too, which I won’t even attempt, yet.
It is good for me, and for all of us, to turn attention to a new task, to concentrate in a new way, and to be challenged to improve. It is good to play games, because they will help in all of these areas.
And then we can apply those gains to our writing, working, relationships, and other aspects of our lives.
Try a new game today to help you get unstuck.
Here are a couple of great places to find sudoku games:
https://www.latimes.com/games/sudoku
I’d love to hear about your experience learning sudoku, or another game or puzzle you complete to challenge yourself and get unstuck.