Sudoku Attack!!1!

For the security and welfare of all of those who had to suffer through my brief, but all too powerful, fixation with Sudoku: you can once again call me, the infatuation is over.

My sad spiral of addiction began Christmas night when [the Vegan] Goldsmith introduced me to the (canonical?) game. Judging by the ten people that were playing it on my plane from Atlanta to Brooklyn, and from the fact that Barnes and Noble moved their supply of Sudoku books from the Games isle to the Bargain Bin, I discovered "the most fashionable logic game since the Rubick's Cube" at least five months late. From the scorn of the cashier, I gather it was not even démodé enough to be considered hip again.

Bummer, always too late. I will attribute my untrendy time delay to the great infantilization process known as graduate school.

While in 2005, Bertram Felgenhauer discovered there to be 6,670,903,752,021,072,936, 960 (27,704,267,971 x 9! × 722 × 27 for those of you counting) possible Sudokus, I was soon bored after four puzzles (one of which I horribly butchered).

So, Sudoku, the most fascinating and tedious late trend of 2005 -

I salute you.