I have not been very good at any sort of non-physical game (except Chess and Bridge), although I enjoy trying them.
I was extremely good at crosswords. It used to be a contant battle, when I lived in Bombay, as my dad and I would try to get to the Times of India newspaper before the other, so that we could finish the crossword before the other got his hands on the paper. I was particular good at anagrams, while he was good at quotations!
That was probably how I got into the habit of waking up at the unearthly hour of 4 am!
When I was studying and working in England I used to get The London Times, an expensive newspaper, just so I could do the crossword puzzle. My dad would have enjoyed that as there were far more quotations in them.
But I lost that crossword habit many years ago.
When we were in Mumbai for our holidays last December, my cousin's wife, Beena, was there for a couple of days. I saw her really enjoying doing something in the newspaper. I thought she was doing the crossword, but she told me she was doing something called the Sudoku.
I had never tried it although my grandson, Samu, had tried to explain the basics to me.
On returning to Finland, I found that the local newspaper, Kaleva, carried three Sudoku entries every day. They are labelled as EASY, MODERATE and DIFFICULT.
I started to attempt the EASY one. After a couple of days I was completing it within a span of about 35 minutes. Slowly the time decreased. I am now at a steady 15 minutes. Occasionally I have completed it in as little as 5 minutes.
So I started attempting the MODERATE puzzle. I have only completed it a couple of times. I think I was extremely lucky on those occasions. Most days I get about halfway and then other pressures call me away from the newspaper.
I also have been attempting the DIFFICULT version. In most cases I complete about 50% in about 5 minutes and them am completely stuck.
Can anyone explain whether there is some methodology to handle the MODERATE and DIFFICULT puzzles. Would greatly appreciate any advice as it is a bit frustrating to give up halfway!
And I don't want to cheat! :-)
