Further Complications

Here's an analogy for everyone:

I love Sudoku. I do. Many people who know me know this fact.

When doing Sudoku, I skip past the simple ones. I don't want anything to do with them. Instead, give me the most complicated, ridiculous one to deal with. The tougher it is to crack, the more pleasure I get from it. If there is a level of difficulty called "Crazy", it's the one for me.

Inevitably, I will run into trouble with it. I will start to get stuck and keep trying the same techniques over and over to crack it (what's the definition of "insanity" again?) It will start to look messy. I'll make little numerical notes in the corners and it will no longer look "clean".

Then, sometimes, I'll make a mistake. Now what? Do I stop?

Good lord, no.

I keep on trying. Now I'm scratching out numbers and trying to retrace my steps about where it went wrong. Where did I put the wrong number? Where did my logic fail?

I've gone so far as to go all the way back, crossing out all the numbers and trying to start "fresh". Only now it doesn't look so fresh. The puzzle is a mess. The paper is struggling to hold under the weight of ink or keep it together through all the erasing.

Most times I give up at this point. I cross the puzzle out and set it aside. I won't go back to it.

Even if I were to finish it, there sometimes isn't much pleasure as a result.



Why don't I just pick the simple puzzle?