The Sudoku Conundrum
In an earlier post I wrote the following.
Except for one curious thing. I do the Sudoku in The Times every day and have always found that the Super Fiendish were beyond my powers, unless I resulted to a process of elimination. That in my book is almost cheating.
But since the stroke, I can do these without problems in just a few minutes. I would never accuse such an august newspaper as The Times, of dumbing down, but they have just introduced a new section called Mind Games.
I should write to them.
I haven’t written, except to enter their Sudoku championships, where I did mention the fact that my prowess has improved.
I’m no expert on brains and how they work, but could it be a general improvement, that would have happened anyway. We all learn new tricks as we get older and have I just worked out other wheezes to find a solution. Possibly as my brain has had to relearn how to do things that it can’t do anymore, new pathways are being found or uncovered, that give my brain extra power in solving problems. On the other hand, I’ve always solved problems and that to me is almost a pastime in its own right.
Remember too, in hospital in both Hong Kong and Addenbrookes, I spent a lot of time doing the various puzzles in The Times. So it could just be a case of practice making things better, as it is by no means perfect!
The Anonymous Widower 
[…] and Body Changes In the previous post on Sudoku, I speculated how my problem solving ability was […]
Pingback by Mind and Body Changes « The Anonymous Widower | July 23, 2010 |
I also do the Sudoku in The Times every day and never fail to get the SFs completed. J and I compete to see who can finish first. We also do the Ken Ken. I am driven to do them by the feeling (probably wrong) that I must keep my brain as exercised as possible to ward off alzheimer’s.
Knowing you from school, I find it hard to believe that you ever found them difficult. Maybe your earlier difficulty was through inexperience in solving them. Certainly one gets better with experience.
Comment by John Wright | July 23, 2010 |
There is another factor here in that for the last couple of years, I’ve usually only done the Killer consistently. Only perhaps in the last three months have I donr the ordinary Sudoku evet day. So practice might be a factor!
Comment by AnonW | July 24, 2010 |
I have several “strategies” to maintian/improve my concentration, hand eye co-ordination, etc. One of them is suduko, I do the “killer” ones mostly and it does help, I know I am having a bad day when I cant physically get the numbers in the right squares, thankfully that isnt every day. I also find it relaxes and de-stresses me, since I concentrate completely on it rather than other things
Comment by Liz P | July 24, 2010 |