#335: The Sudoku Book
Puzzling away the stress
Sitting down to write this post, I was, like the whole of the UK and possibly the rest of the world, tired.
I didn’t know where to start or what to write about. I decided instead that I needed to focus my mind on something, anything, even if it was not the task at hand.
I whipped out my book of sudokus and filled in a three. And a nine. And a six. I stared at the empty boxes, configuring the possible combinations. Just black and white marks on a page. No emotional context. Nothing I could analyse for subtexts. Just a lot of counting from 1 to 9. Over and over.
The repetition calmed me. And then excited me, as I realised I was close to filling in all of the boxes. I rushed the last few, got one wrong in haste, rectified it, and finished with a feeling of satisfaction. I felt a lot better.
Googling the “benefits of sudoku” led me to many articles claiming that sudoku would help improve memory and stave off dementia. There is a suggestion, when it comes to the brain, that we must “use it or lose it”. Sudoku, apparently, will keep my brain young. A very attractive benefit. The NHS, however, is a little sceptical of these claims, analysing the study behind these headlines, and finding it inconclusive.
For me, though, my favourite part is the feeling when you finish the puzzle. When you’ve spent all day at work, having to chase or change tasks to the point that there’s very little you can actually tick off your to-do list, doing an activity that can be concretely “finished” is immediately soothing.
Because you know, if you can finish a sudoku, you can finish anything.
