The Value of Sudoku

I am a Sudoku-ista. Every weekday night, I solve (or try to solve) the Sudoku puzzle in my hometown newspaper, the Washington Post.

I have slowly realized that Sudoko teaches many of journalism's best lessons: accuracy, attention to detail, the importance of looking for patterns and the fact things are not always what they appear to be.

The puzzle is most frequently a large square made up of 12 smaller squares. Some cells already contain numbers. The goal is to fill in the empty cells, one number in each, so that each column, row and region contains the numbers 1 through 9 exactly once. Each number in the solution therefore occurs only once in each of three "directions," hence the "single numbers" implied by the puzzle's title, according to the website Sudoku Central.

Let's start with: Things are not always what they appear to be. Sudoku appears to be about numbers. It's not. There is no math in Sudoko. Zip. Nada. None. The numbers are simply a device to teach you how to think through a problem and arrive at the right conclusion based on the evidence before you. It teaches logical thinking.

Immigrants love it because language is not a barrier.

Then there's accuracy. If one number is wrong, the whole puzzle is wrong. That's a terrific lesson in accuracy. People can work for several hours (as I did last night) only to realize they made a mistake some place in the puzzle. It's all over.

One mistake in a story casts the entire story into question.

Paying attention to detail is another lesson. Sudoku has vertical and horizontal columns and 12 small squares. When placing a number in a bottom row, you have to check to insure that number appears no other place in that square or at the top of that column. (That's the mistake I made last night.)

If you've put a number on the left-hand side of a row, you have to insure that same number doesn't appear on the right-hand side of the same row. Lack of attention to detail can doom all your hard work.

Finally, the puzzle rewards seeing patterns. This is the real secret to solving a Sudoku puzzle: Look for patterns among the numbers already in the puzzle.

My cousin Marion, a former high school math teacher, loves crossword puzzles, but not Sudoku. Recently I told her of my affection for Sudoku. She looked at the puzzle and started putting in numbers.

"How did you figure out that number so quickly," I added incredulously.

"I looked at the patterns," she answered.

"How do you know to do that? I'm a journalist, and a friend had to tell me that."

"I'm a math teacher, and that's the first thing you do when someone gives you a set of numbers. You look for the patterns."

We journalists tend to plunge into stories. It always pays to take some time to gather background information from the clips, from a Google search, from Census data or other available sources of information. Delay reporting long enough to detect patterns and trends.

Now, I have to work today's puzzle.

Bobbi Bowman, a longtime newspaper reporter and editor, is diversity director for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.