I had a belated birthday dinner with my in-laws last night, enjoying pasta and a decadent Godiva-laden dessert from The Cheesecake factory.

As a present I received one of those “for dummies” books, Sudoku for Dummies, Volume 2.

Now, I know about as much about Sudoku as the average duck knows about nuclear physics, which is to say, only a passing glance. So, it would appear, Sudoku for Dummies, Volume 2 is the perfect tome to teach me the joy and agony of Sudoku.

For the truly clueless, here’s Wikipedia’s description of the logical puzzle game Sudoku:

Sudoku (Japanese: 数独, sÅ«doku), sometimes spelled Su Doku, is a logic-based placement puzzle, also known as Number Place in the United States. The aim of the canonical puzzle is to enter a numeral from 1 through 9 in each cell of a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids (called “regions”), starting with various numerals given in some cells (the “givens”). Each row, column and region must contain only one instance of each numeral. Completing the puzzle requires patience and logical ability. Its grid layout is reminiscent of other newspaper puzzles like crosswords and chess problems. Although first published in 1979, Sudoku initially became popular in Japan in 1986 and attained international popularity in 2005.

I don’t have a particularly logical brain, but I do enjoy a good challenge. I used to play the SET Game daily puzzle religiously, but got out of practice. Maybe Sudoku is my newest daily obsession. I certainly have the right book for it. 😉

UPDATE: My cousin Nathan translated Su Doku as “number poison” if that’s any indication of gameplay.

Blog chatter about Sudoku as analyzed by Technorati and Blogpulse.

Sudoku Strategies is a blog entirely devoted to Sudoku.

Play online for free with Daily Sudoku from Mousebreaker.

UPDATE II: Crooked Timber pointed me in the direction of Web Sudoku where I just solved Easy Puzzle 4,102,396,884 in 14 minutes, 0 seconds!

They also mention the growing online trend in Picture sudoku (via Flickr).