It occurred to me today that I have learned more from Sudoku than some of the college classes I’ve taken!

So much, in fact, that this will be a two-part post, with the second part coming tomorrow.

Anyway…

I have been a Sudoku player for many years, but I’ve become pretty fanatic about it over the last few years especially. And, as silly as it might sound to hear me talk about the game that I love to play, there are quite a few things that I’ve learned from Sudoku.

–>What might seem hard isn’t always that hard, and what might seem easy might not be that easy.

Most Sudoku puzzles have a difficulty level assigned to them. If you download them from the internet or find them in a book or –my favorite– pull them off of the daily calendar, it will say somewhere on the puzzle what difficulty level it is. I have, on numerous occasions been more challenged by what I was told was easy and not challenged enough by what I was told was hard. Just over the weekend, I spent forty-five minutes on an easy puzzle that should have taken seven minutes, just to turn around and complete a hard puzzle that should have taken me a couple of hours in seventeen minutes.

Just so you know, when other people say that something is hard, what they mean is, it was hard for them. That doesn’t mean it will be hard for you. Similarly, when someone tells you that something is easy, be warned; it might be hard for you.

–>Practice really does make you better.

I don’t know if it should have taken me this long (I’m forty-four) to learn that this is true. In my own defense, I probably learned this was true earlier, but I don’t think I’ve understood it as deeply then as I do now. I have been practicing my skills at Sudoku for a long time, and I am better at it than I’ve ever been. I have learned from the process of doing these puzzles what tricks to use. I know how to change my approach when I am stumped so that I continue to progress. And –this is huge– I’ve learned that you don’t have to be away from something for very long before you start to lose your edge.

If I ever get pulled away from my daily Sudoku practice, even if it’s only for a few days, I notice that I don’t have the skills that I did have because I let myself slip. If you think getting to the top of something is a challenge, try staying on top.

–>Sometimes, it’s just best to walk away.

I will literally sit in front of a Sudoku puzzle, just staring at it, going over the possibilities in my head until I am so frustrated that I am not aware of anything else; just my task and my approach and my frustration and my failure. And I can sit there in front of that puzzle and stare at it for as long as I want to, but I’m not going to get any further for my effort. When it gets like this, I need to walk away. I will get up and leave and go do something else. Then, I can come back and sit down and, in seconds, I will have the next step to take, because all I needed was a change to clear my head so I could come back and see things differently.

And, this was one of the greatest lessons on my life. How many times have I just walked away because I needed a chance to think, a chance to breathe, a chance to reset my mind? And then, to re-engage when you’ve had a break, everything becomes so much clearer.

–>Recognizing patterns is a must.

There is an inner geometry to a Sudoku puzzle, beyond that which is understood by basic players of the game. That geometry helps you, if you know it well enough, to recognize the patterns in the puzzle as they develop. When a block in a certain spot get solved, and you know the geometry of the puzzle and recognize the patterns, it gives you other block solutions that you might not have had otherwise. It took me many hundreds of puzzles to start to see the patterns, but now, I see them in so many of the puzzles that I do.

I think pattern recognition is a part of what makes for the most observant citizens in our society. The things that are going on in the world around us, the problems that need to be solved, the issues of contention that we’ve had with each other, the difficulties that weigh down the human condition; these issues are not old issues. They are part of a bigger pattern that we should be recognizing when we see it, so we can do something intelligent about solving these issues. It’s the twenty-first century, folks, and we should be beyond some of this garbage.

MORE TOMORROW…