Ever-puzzling investigator Steve Nadis has come up with perhaps the first practical use for the puzzle called sudoku:
For more than a year now, my wife has wondered why I’m devoting so much of my waking hours to sudoku. Unlike handball–which has provided me with a steady stream of sprained, dislocated, and fractured fingers–sudoku seems to afford no tangible consequences. But all that changed yesterday. I ventured into my bedroom in the afternoon, surprised to see the door closed. When I got inside, I saw the reason for the closure: An oversized wasp was buzzing around frantically, eager to escape so as to terrorize my children, their playmates, and our babysitter downstairs. The incensed creature made a play at me and I needed something with which to defend myself. The first thing I grabbed was my only sudoku book (which I’m saving for airplanes). One swat of that paperback volume stunned the wasp; I gently wrapped it in a kleenex and sent it outside, dazed and confused, but otherwise intact. So you see, ladies and gentlemen, there are practical uses for sudoku after all. It just takes time to find them.