h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Am I the only one who finds this craze incredibly tiresome. I've christened it So Dullko - because friends have lost the ability to talk about ANYTHING else.

What's more - EVERYBODY claims to be getting better and better in smug self congratulationary manner. Soon we'll all be genuises won't we!

No. Because it's not a test of intelligence, it's a test of pattern recognition - you could - if you worked really hard - train a chimp to do them.

I know I'm sounding grumpy - but I long for intelligent conversation to return to my office and for my newspaper columnists to write about news once in a while.

How exciting can putting numbers in a box be?

Try it, you might surprise yourself.

Oh I have. And I didn't suprise myself.

I just don't 'get' it.

Good luck to those that do - but really - can you explain all the hype. I note even the Sun is publishing them now.

God 'elp us.

> I note even the Sun is publishing them now.
> God 'elp us.

My sentiments exactly.
(I shall duck and say no more, to avoid offending the followers of that particular source of unquestionably true and obviously earth-shatteringly important news)

Half the problem is that the difficulty level on the puzzles in the papers are too high for the beginner. Hopefully Teh Sun will correct this by using puzzles at the very easy level, or lower

I have still not had the opportunity to try one of the puzzles in the Sun. One page I did see contained two puzzles, one of which was described as a 'Teaser', and the other as a 'Hard' one. The alleged-hard one had an average of four numbers in each 3x3 square, and didn't look very hard. Alas, it was someone else's paper, so I didn't get a chance to scribble all over it.

Anyone care to lob an example at me via email (email address on h2g2 researcher page)

Jim

On second thoughts, don't bother.

The colleague I worked with today at the shop had a copy of that particular newspaper.

It contained two puzzles, neither of which had reflective or rotational symmetry. One puzzle it described as 'The teaser', and the other one was (according to the publisher) 'Difficult'.



I wouldn't rate these 'Mild' on the Times scale. Three minutes later (I was busy taking and paying bets) the alleged difficult puzzle melted. A few minutes later the 'Teaser' (which I had until then ignored) fell by the wayside.

In order for it to be difficult, it seems that the authors are relying on solving by elimination (i.e. find a square that can only take one possible result) ignoring all of the other solving methods.

In brief: Aaaaauuuuuggghhh!!

I'll stick with The Times.