Item — HN Reader

> As computer security expert Ben Laurie has stated, Sudoku is "a denial of service attack on human intellect". […] I thought maybe this would demonstrate that [my wife doesn’t] need to spend any more time on Sudoku.

The same could be said about every logic puzzle, or other types of puzzles.

People don't do them so actually solve any sort of new problem, or achieve some sort of productivity.

The same reason people don’t jog to get from point A to point B, or to learn how to get around more quickly.

Logic puzzles are exercising parts of our brain that don’t get exercised regularly.

3 comments

Feels like the "demonstrated it's no longer necessary to solve sudokus" statement may have been a joke :)

Probably a joke... nevertheless I had the same reaction ! It exercises your deduction, binary thinking, also stochastic vs systematic methodology (first look around randomly find the most obvious before going number by number). Getting to discover all the tricks and reasoning in various "dimensions" is very satisfactory as well. But above all sudokuing puts you in a sort of meditative state : focusing your mind on this micro deductive world gets rid of all the noise and can be very relaxing between 2 pomodoros :)

Most logic puzzles such as the software pack made from SGT (or under the paper puzzle booklets, same concept but with pens and paper) are trivially solvable with computers and often STEM people will get bored with them fast. Solve it once, solve it for all.

If any, the challenge and fun would come by solving them with an algorithm under its favourite programming language.

Also, lateral thinking based riddles/puzzles are often more fun to solve, such as the crime related ones.