Will Shortz, if that is his real name, is the Crossword Editor for The Old Grey Lady, and puzzlemaster for Liane Hansen's Weekend Edition on Sunday mornings. (Note: my wife would include that my evaluation of the prospects of any given Sunday rest entirely on whether or not Ms. Hansen is at her appointed microphone or away on some specious member station visit with people who don't need her nearly as much as do we who are lurching toward functionality at an unholy hour that was surely not chosen by the God who loves us for the gathering of his people-I fault Paul, and we'd obviously have better attendance if we started after the NFL games were through rather than just as they're starting, but I digress from my digression-we need Liane to guide us smoothly to our alert states, somewhere between the shower and the car. Enough with the member station visits, already!)
Mr. Shortz is also the party responsible, if not for the introduction, then certainly for the popularization of the Japanese number puzzle, Sudoku, in the good ol' US of A. And therein lies my gratitude.
What would a committed insomniac do in this 21st Century without Sudoku? One shudders to consider. Just knowing that those little grids of nine innings-I mean blocks-are there, with their three outs-I mean rows-of mini-grids, where everything is ordered, logical, timeless...just like baseball........oh, pardon my reverie.
I have an enormous appreciation for the Japanese people. They love our national game even more than we do. (No, not the NFL-I didn't say our idolatrous national religion!). They love Bill Murray as proved in Lost in Translation. And they have given occupation to the sleepless everywhere, via Sudoku!
And don't tell anyone, but on a couple of recent nights, a puzzle from a level of skill marked "Insane" actually put me out! God bless you, Puzzle-sans!
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