I have never been much of a gamer. I haven't done puzzles much and rarely played cards. What is the point? I'd rather read Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World and be there as a British railway engineer and planner begins to understand the layers of the earth. When a 500 piece puzzle is finished, what do I actually have?
Well, I am learning. It actually started on a cruise to the southern bits of Alaska. Each day, the ship would publish a Sudoku puzzle. I had learned accidentally that those puzzles depended on the placement of symbols only and that other markers than numerals could be used. We even found a children's version that used little pictures of animals instead of the numerical characters. We would sit together about 4 PM each day and there on the table was the day's Sudoku. Lynn does all sorts of puzzles and she began to show me how to do them. It became a ritual with us, do one together at drink time. Lynn would coach me and look for errors and oversights.
Before long, I wondered about known strategies and even methods for producing the puzzles by computer. I bought some books. That's a natural step for me: buy some books about whatever. They rarely hurt and usually help understand what is going on.
Years before the cruise, I had read the latest Herbert Benson book, "The Breakout Principle". He is the main author of The Relaxation Response, the book that helped me understand basic practices of meditation. http://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/Home/life-classes/meditation-steps I was surprised to read his statement that reading or knitting put the mind in a state similar to that achieved by meditation or use of biofeedback.
I was quite aware that starting to do Sudoku was a new thing for me. I tried to watch my feelings and attitudes as I got into doing the puzzles. Rick Mitchell, PhD, helped me watch my attitude toward getting to a solution with a puzzle or a problem. Keep the failure feeling low and stay with it. Don't expect perfection and apply effort repeatedly.
Now, a year and a half later, I love sailing through a Sudoku. I am a wimp and only do easy ones. I tried that business of little notes in the corners of each cell, using pencil and lots of erasing. No thanks, too much like work. Even with a Kappa Sudoku book of all easy ones, I get careless. All done, I check the answers. Errors! Oversights! Luckily, I know there are over 2 billion possible Sudoku arrangements, not even counting the newer, more complex forms. I cheerfully proceed to another. I would have to live another 5.5 million years to do work through them all. It is a comfort when I do slide through an easy one and find it all right.
