Mindless Drivel

one of the nice perks of working on graveyard is that there isnt any management on site during our shift, at least not until the last hour or two.  this allows us to take some pretty nice long breaks if everything is running smoothly, which gives me a bunch of free time to work with.  yes, it is while im stuck at work, but ive gotten a ton of reading done along with posting a little more frequently - assuming that there is a computer free, and no one is around to watch what im doing. 

recently however, my time has been taken up by a puzzle that someone got me hooked on.  its called a sudoku.  one of the guys here goes to the daily sudoku website and prints it out for a few of us.  the basics of the puzzle are fairly simple.  you are presented with a 9 by 9 grid, and the entire grid is composed of 9 different 3 by 3 grids.  in each row, column, and 3 by 3 grid each, there are the numbers 1 thru 9 - only one of each and not in any particular order.  each puzzle is slightly different in that you are given a different number of starting numbers in different locations.  some puzzles are incredibly easy while others are much more difficult, but they are all still quite entertaining. 

if you do decide to try one at some point, my only suggestion is this:  if you find that youve made a mistake somewhere and have two of the same number in either a box, row, or column, dont try to fix your mistake.  wad up the paper and throw it away because it is extremely difficult to find where youve screwed up.  you are better off printing another copy and starting over or just waiting till tomorrow for the next puzzle.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 1:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.