Curmudgeon’s corner
Was I truly the only person in Britain never to have heard of Sudoku before all the broadsheets suddenly went potty about it? Staying the Hotel du Vin earlier this week (had I mentioned that at all?), we had the delights of a complementary Independent to add to those of the Guardian of a morning, which is always good for watching the steam emanate from Mr P's ears if nothing else (it's not the Independent itself* he hates so much, apparently, but People Who Read The Independent**). So the Guardian has "Sudoku Classic", which they claim is the superior form, being devised entirely by human being rather than computer. The Indie weighs in with no less than three different grids of varying complexity, and now it seems that both the Times and Mail (which has obviously decided it too is a 'compact') had it FIRST!
Frankly I'm baffled. Where did it all spring from? Why on earth did Newsnight see fit to run a piece on "Broadsheet Bingo" the other night? And then to have its own version (with letters rather than numbers, as we were solemnly informed by Paxman after the report) on its website? I think they're taking the piss somewhat but you never know with Newsnight. How on earth do people have time to fill these things in? And does anyone really buy a newspaper because it's got a Sudoku puzzle in it? I mean, at least with your traditional tabloid million pound bingo there was a wafer-thin chance you could end up with the million quid.
* those fantastically annoying and sanctimonious front page spreads aside, obviously
** I should point out that it's not all People Who Read The Independent that Mr P hates, mostly just the ones who write unctuous letters to it. In fairness he doesn't much like people who write unctuous letters to The Guardian either.
posted by Pashmina @ 8:58 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
My concerns were the opposite, not that I hadn't heard of them but that I had and that I was happily doing them in Metro delighted to find something in the aforementioned paper of interest, without realising that they'd become a phenomenon. I mean they were just a little puzzle I enjoyed (albeit one I strugged with from time to time) and now they're a thing and I look like a band-wagon jumper. Which I have been guilty of in the past I'll admit but I'm not in this particular case.
Me thinks the woman doth protest too much. Hey ho. I've got a Sodoku to do.
Well I can quite see the appeal - even I might be able to manage one (though obviously I've not got the time, what with the blog to worry about and all) but I'm just bewildered that they suddenly sprung up out of nowhere.
I think you should stick to the line that you've been doing them for a while and didn't even know they were in any other papers. That way you're an early adopter (which of course we know you to be in Real Life)
Pashmina says: I think [Newsnight are] taking the piss somewhat but you never know with Newsnight.
Actually I think The Guardian's G2 is taking the piss somewhat as well, but I really can't tell. Today they have "Sudoku on every page" which is just a baffling escalation of the Sudoku wars. This is accompanied by their claim "each one has been lovingly etched by a black-belt Sudoku master on the upper slopes of Mount Fuji." On the one hand they're taking the mic', but on the other hand they're a guilty participant.
Oh yes, you know I was going to blog about that, but you've saved me the trouble by saying pretty much exactly what I thought. Cheers.
Even though they have the grace to acknowledge their own role in the sudoku madness, it strikes me as being slightly in the manner of embarrassed uncle at Christmas when a practical joke's gone a bit wrong. If that makes any sense.
A rare intervention from (at least what I would like to think of as) the eminence grise of this blog:-
To correct the Home Office (my current nomenclature préfère), I really do hate the Independent as a paper as much as its readers and correspondents, despite the fact that, together with its sister title, it has a roster of some of my favourite political commentators; namely Richards, Rentoul, Hari, Jacobson, Macintyre and (more for nostalgia’s sake than due to him saying anything too rational these days) Watkins.
My problem with the paper is that it is so incredibly pompous and self-regarding, in a way that the Grauniad never is. For instance, The Indie would never have the wit to do anything as juvenile as put a 'hand-crafted' Sudoku puzzle on each page of their supplement. It’s too anal. There's no humour there; it comes across as if everything it does is a matter of public service for which we should all be deeply grateful. And there's Alibhai-Brown too. And a piss poor sketch-writer.
But it’s the front pages that really do wind me up. I concede they might attract some people to the paper, but not me and, as often as not, their splashes really fail to tell me what the stories du jour are. I'll wind up because this is descending into a rant, but, frankly, the Indie is neither big nor clever, just really, really irritating.
And yes, if I was bored on the tube and saw a copy lying around I would glance through it.
PS - It isn't 5.30a.m. as suggested at the bottom of this comment. It is 1.30pm; a perfectly normal time to be on the computer. Im not a freak you know.
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