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

Over the past few weeks, sudoku puzzles have been springing up all over the place. Yesterday's G2 in the Grauniad had one on each page, twenty all together. Now, I like puzzles, but I can't see what's so special about these. Solving them is a laborious task involving searching for ages to find the one spot where there's a decent number of clues to tell you what the number is, filling it in and then searching for ages again. There's no "eureka" moment, just a plod on. Mostly I get bored, stop paying enough attention and then realise I've got two 3s in a column.

So, if you like these things (and some people must), why?

Personally i find this puzzle kind of tedious but it is becoming more wide spread.
I know it is very popular in Japan ~ because as a language Japanese doesn't lend itself to crosswords and this is seen as an alternative.
I suppose it also crosses the language barrier of the world quite well ~ anyone from any country can do one of these.

I suppose like any puzzle, it's the satisfaction of solving it. People may like one particular type (words/numbers/pictures), all sorts or none at all.

The puzzle has to be the appropriate difficulty level - too easy & it isn't sufficient challenge, too hard & it's too frustrating.

My mathematician son was delighted to see so many in the Guardian. I prefer jigsaws & crosswords to numbers.

I suppose I should confess that I'm stating to find them addictive. I keep going back and trying another one, even though they're frustrating.

I don't really see sudoku as a numbers puzzle - you could use any symbols.

There was one in the Independent which was hexadecimal (ie 16x16) instead of decimal. It was not terribly difficult, although I had to have two goes at it, but it was a real slog to do.

I managed to download this off the net, and my son is addicted.

His best score is 4:10 (easy) mine is 3:58 (medium)