Monday, November 24, 2008

WAR #1: "List of Sudoku terms and jargon"

WAR, "Wikipedia At Random," is a fun little piece that I'm writing occasionally. Go to Wikipedia, hit "Random Article," and reflect! This week: List of Sudoku terms and jargon!

Well, I'm first struck by the size of the Table of Contents on this thing, and second, by the need for a list of terms for a Sudoku puzzle. Complicated words include puzzle, box, and size - I'm so confused, hang on, lemme figure out what they mean by these...

Sudoku types and classes... yawn. Scroll, scroll... wait, what the fuck is this shit?


25 squares? LETTERS!? COME ON, MATH NERDS, SUDOKU WAS FUN, STOP COMPLICATING THIS SHIT. You people always have to overcomplicate shit and it never gets anything done, like Statistics. I mean, the fact that such specialized terms exist for looking at the fucking puzzle ("scanning") or trying to solve it ("cross hatching" or "counting") is absolutely absurd. This is some OCD shit, come on.

The only redeeming part about sudoku now is that it recently earned me two free Crunch bars from my RA. I'll give them points for naming specific aspects of the board, but it seems like half of these terms are for people who like to use esoteric terms to make themselves feel better about the fact that they're obsessively training for a competition in solving simple math problems.

When people argue that Wikipedia should resemble a real-life encyclopedia rather than a catalogue of all world knowledge, it's article like this and full-on character analysis of an obscure anime that aired two episodes before being canceled that are used to bolster their stance.

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