Sudo who?

I am quite bewildered by this sudoku craze that is said to be sweeping across the world. My initial skepticism was helped by the extensive publicity accorded to the puzzle crossword amalgam. “What? Another syndicated puzzle and another stupid attempt to outdo another!” were the first words which registered inside my head.
Some weeks later karies_07 a dear friend of mine called me up to ask me if I had seen the days puzzle, “yeah man, it was an easy one wasn’t it?” was my prompt reply handed to him with in a matter of fact tone which hid the real truth….I wasn’t tuned into to sudoku and I didn’t want to look like an ignorant fool. So I lied.
The next morning I was sitting on my table with the day’s paper and newspapers from the two days past, trying to crack the riddle called sudoku. Needless to say I couldn’t solve any of them and as I sat there staring at the number 4 mocking me since I didn’t no where to fit it -the phone rang. It was karies_07 he had called me to tell me he had finally cracked the day’s puzzle, now this was the limit I had to solve it. I hunted the net for tips I talked to karies_07 about the new sudoku solvers he had downloaded from the net and I tried hard every morning to solve the days puzzle (not to hard though). Then did manage one day to solve one puzzle, my ecstasy at having championed this Zen art was rudely killed by a look at the puzzle rating –one star.
Forget Zen master I was not even level one apprentice, so I tried hard again and again to try to solve harder puzzles…..this was the sudoku fever they were talking about, I could feel it in me, I would borrow the neighbor’s paper to solve the same puzzle again and again. I was perturbed at not being able to go beyond the second star puzzles… I could do it if I tried harder was my thinking. then one day while I was staring at a 5 star level puzzle wondering if I should have a go at it and break my heart again- the phone rang, it was karies_07 he had called up to tell me how this puzzle had probably been wrongly rated since he had solved it easily, I recognized the tone . It was the same tenor employed by me when karies_07 had first called up to talk about sudoku, and I smiled. I do not sudoku anymore, not unless I have nothing productive to do. It is just a collection of numbers strewn across a 9×9 grid, meant to disturb the mental equilibrium of people who try to fit them into it like children, searching for that one elusive solution.
I called up karies_07 while I wrote this to ask him if he still was into sudoku “why yes obviously” he replied “why couldn’t you solve today’s puzzle?” “No nothing …I was just asking” was my short reply as I hung the phone smiling, ear to ear.

p.s. thanx to royal bengal turtle for the info…..now i know what u r tuned into.. 🙂