{"id":22,"date":"2005-05-24T22:46:45","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T12:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/?p=22"},"modified":"2007-10-07T20:59:29","modified_gmt":"2007-10-07T10:59:29","slug":"22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2005\/05\/24\/22\/","title":{"rendered":"Get a Sudo-Clue!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

A couple of days ago I wrote about Sudoku, and how it had been overhyped<\/a> by the SMH<\/a>. <\/p>\n

If I write about it again, am I guilty of contributing to the hype? To reduce that risk, I will quote from The Australian<\/a>, a competitor newspaper that is also on the Sudoku-running bandwagon.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Australian’s blog comments<\/del> letters page doesn’t have permalinks, so let me quote directly from May 24, 2005:<\/p>\n

\nMAY I express my disappointment with Sudoku? There is no thought process involved in the puzzles other than simple elimination. There is no greater “difficulty” in the “hard” as opposed to the “very easy” \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the “hard” is simply more time-consuming!
\nStuart Partis
\nKingston Park, SA\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bad news, Stuart – I thought that too, but I was wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nTHE puzzles Sudoku are claimed to require “no mathematics and can be solved by logic and reason alone”.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry, but mathematics is logic and reason alone. It’s nice to see some mathematics in the daily press.
\nTerry Gagen
\nSchool of Mathematics and Statistics,
\nSydney University\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Associate Professor Gagen<\/a>, you are a mathematician, and you seem to be implying you know something about logic and reason, so let’s take a little look at the syllogism that forms your argument.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Sudoku can be solved by login and reason alone.<\/li>\n
  2. Mathemetics is login and reason alone.<\/li>\n
  3. Therefore, Sudoku can be solved by mathematics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Could it be that Gagen is a plagiarist? He copied exactly what I said when I wrote in my personal diary from when I was 13 years old. I can prove it too, using the same login and reason that he did! Look:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Gagen’s letter was printed with ink on paper alone.<\/li>\n
    2. My diary was ink on paper alone.<\/li>\n
    3. Therefore, Gagen’s letter was printed in my diary<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Terry! How dare you read my personal diary?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Examines the logic of other Sudoku-consumers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,31,35,33],"tags":[92,119,50],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cathartic-rant","category-geek","category-heroic-failures","category-puzzle-solving","tag-journalism","tag-sudoku","tag-whinge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}