Archive for the Category "Number puzzles"
Yeseterday’s Observer sudoku took me 2 mins 51 secs to complete – possibly my fastest time for any sudoku. It’s been going for three weeks now – time to make it a little harder, I think.
The Independent‘s Super Sudoku on Saturday (try saying that without your teeth in) took 110 minutes – pretty good, I reckon, for such a large puzzle.
I don’t know where to start when it comes to critiquing the Government’s response to the London bombings, a mixture of excessive authoritarianism and shutting the stable door once the milk has been spilt. Can I really be agreeing with Peter Hitchens?
Fortunately, there was a good piece from Mary Riddell in yesterday’s Observer that expressed many of my thoughts:
Crimes of ‘glorifying and condoning terrorism’ hark back to the 18th-century offence of seditious libel, under which pamphleteers disagreeing with the state were clapped in jail. Outlawing non-violent groups, however dislikeable, may make them a magnet for the dangerous. Worst of all is talk of suspending Article Three of the Human Rights Act, which forbids sending suspects back to torture. Such a move is alarming both in its intent and in its symbolism. A first bone has been slung to those who bayed for an assault on human rights.
The Observer also featured Jason Burke’s manifesto for combatting terrorism.
In the Observer Review section was the second of the paper’s Sudoku puzzles. Both have been shockingly straightforward and took less than four minutes each. I assume they’re easing their readership in.
I’ve not heard a fanfare from The Independent, but according to the website of The New Zealand Herald, the winner of the Indie’s Sudoku Grand Master Championship 2005 was Edward Billig.
Edward Billig, 23, the new star in the quiz firmament, is a tall, ursine youth with close-cropped hair and beard, who resembles a Motorhead roadie.
He is, in fact, an audio technician who lives in Wapping and works in Fleet Street.
Maybe there’s something in his pedigree – the fact that his father was a maths teacher who did music and sound recording – that explains how he can finish six hard sudokus in only 22 and a half minutes.
He doesn’t have a secret plan.
“You just look at groups of numbers and work out what’s missing,” he said.
He practises by timing himself at work.
“Carol Vorderman says she can do a pretty fiendish one in 19 minutes. I can manage it in about 10.”
He seemed a little stunned by success.
“My head’s hurting a bit now,” said the Independent Sudoku Grand Master 2005, as he left, bearing his Waterford crystal trophy, his champagne and other paraphernalia of victory. “I think something’s broken inside it.”
Bad luck to those readers who made the final but didn’t win. I’d be interested to hear any accounts of how it went.
(Via.)
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