Some good news for those who want to lose weight. It has been reported that Mental Exercises such as solving Sudoku Puzzles and doing Crosswords can burn an average of 90 calories an hour.

Mental agility expert, Tim Forrester, from the Brain Training website Canny Minds said that “giving the brain a workout burns calories in the same way that giving the body a workout does”.

He said that “When we do something challenging such as a puzzle or a quiz we burn through 1.5 calories every minute.

Source: www.cannyminds.com and www.telegraph.co.uk

SUDOKU Puzzle Solving – A Beginners’ Guide. This guide is for the absolute beginner who has difficulty in getting started with Sudoku Puzzles. In this Part One of the tutorial, we will take you through the simple steps of scanning to begin filling in as many cells as you can. Once you get the idea of how to solve the initial steps, you will be able to continue and solve the demo puzzle. We shall avoid all the buzz words used to explain various steps and go by pure logic based on the Sudoku Rule. This is possible for the Easy Puzzles.

Sudoku is a Numbers Puzzle played by millions of children and adults, world-wide, from below age 7 to above age 70. The History of Sudoku is posted elsewhere in the website under Articles.

The Classic Sudoku Puzzle, which is the most popular, has a 9 x 9 grid with nine rows, nine columns and nine 3 x 3 sub-grids, containing a total of 81 cells with about 25 to 35 given numbers. To solve the puzzle, the player is required to complete all the remaining blank cells based on one simple rule.

Rule: Complete all the blank cells in the 9 x 9 Grid so that each row, each column and each 3 x 3 box (sub-grid) contains all the digits 1 to 9 without repetition.

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A challenge to all Sudoku enthusiasts: Have you ever thought of sliding out a Sudoku?

There is a new game combined from the principles of the popular Sudoku puzzle and the simple, yet deceiving, 15 puzzle of the 1880s. As such, the game is called Sudo15 (for the 4 by 4 size) but in general is called SudoSlide.

SudoSlide was invented by Kung-Ming Tiong, a lecturer at Universiti Malaysia Sabah, and its dynamics were analyzed together with a student, Yen-Peng Lee.

The idea for SudoSlide began around April 2006 and its analysis was completed in October 2006. The publication of the academic article on SudoSlide, which describes its game characteristics and some methods of play appeared in March, 2008 in the Game Journal http://www.gamejournal.org/game_journal_index_2008.php.

SudoSlide was also briefly introduced at a Science Carnival held at the School of Science and Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sabah in March 2008. And recently, one of the authors (Kung-Ming Tiong) talked to Mr. Balasingam of sudoku.com.my and was invited to write this short description on SudoSlide. » Read more

A book review by N.Balasingam

We are pleased to review this book written by another Malaysian. The Author, popularly known as Tee Gee, is Mr Lim Teck Guan, an Electrical Engineer, retired recently, having served in the LLN and subsequently in the privatised TNB. His entire career was with this one establishment.

He was introduced to Sudoku Puzzles two years ago and found himself with lots of time to engage in this new-found pursuit which, in his own words, he got ?hooked? to. He talked to all his friends about Sudoku and introduced many to the game.

Scouting around for books on Sudoku, to hone his Sudoku solving skills, he was not satisfied with what was available. This prompted him to consider writing a book, as suggested by his friends, to come up with a simple book to introduce the game for beginners. » Read more

The Sudoku Numbers Puzzle reached the shores of Malaysia about six months after it hit the Crossword puzzle pages of leading British newspapers in November 2004. From May 2005, newspapers in more than 50 countries, spanning the whole world, started to introduce Sudoku to their readers. The readership in all these countries have taken to Sudoku with frenzy expected to eclipse the Rubik?s cube craze of the 80?s.

Sudoku in Japanese can be translated to ?single number?. This was the name given to the puzzle when it was abbreviated from ?Suji wa dokushin ni kagiru?, which stood for ?the number must be single?. Kaji Maki the president of Nikoli introduced the puzzle in Japan in April 1984 in the Monthly Nikolist.

However, the origins of Sudoku have been traced back to the 18th century. Leonhard Euler, born in Basle, Switzerland in 1707, was a mathematical genius who had authored numerous books and papers. He became blind in his later years but continued his work with mathematics and in 1783 introduced ?Latin Squares? which is considered the precursor to Number Place. » Read more

As sudoku is becoming increasingly popular in the United States, many universities are adopting these number puzzles as a means to develop math and problem solving skills in college students. As ACT scores continue to decline below the national average, there will be a greater need to introduce resources and material that will help incoming college students develop math solving skills. Mathematicians believe that sudoku puzzles are a good way to help below average students with this ability.

Sudoku can help develop math skills because players are encouraged to use logic and skill that normal math classes may not exercise, said Tracy Roberts, who is an assistant registrar for research at Murray State. Often times, it’s not solely the math principles that students misunderstand, but it’s the logic and reasoning involved in using the math principles to solve p

Be prepared for the ultimate brain exercise!

Sudoku-Ball extends the 2 dimensional samurai Sudoku to closed 3 dimensional objects such as cubes, spheres and other geometric shapes. This adds a challenging new dimension to the Sudoku puzzle as not only you have to solve each individual Sudoku by its inter Sudoku logic but also you have to take the neighbouring and adjacent Sudokus into account to solve the entire object.

Please visit http://www.sudoku-ball.com for more information and to play online.

By N.Balasingam

Congratulations to Mr. Jeff H.S.Keow, a Malaysian, on the launch of his book on Sudoku. The book entitled ?Think out of the Block with SUDOKU? is a complete manual on how to solve Sudoku puzzles, unlike most of the books published which give a few pages of tips with hundreds of puzzles. We tend to agree with the writers of the Foreword that this could be ?the first book of its kind in the world?, and definitely a first for Malaysia. A person who is just beginning to solve Sudoku puzzles, and willing to spend a few days to study his book, will get off to a running start to solving these puzzles with relative ease. If this person continues to refer to the book like one refers to a manual or handbook he/she will be attempting the most difficult puzzles within a month or two. Compare this with many of us who spent months to arrive at the Techniques, Procedures and Solving Strategies, which he has laid out in great detail, fully illustrated with worked examples. » Read more

By Allan Koay

He didn’t even know what it was when he first laid eyes on it. It was an unusual nine-by-nine box of numbers. But now, he has written a book on how to solve the puzzle. Jeff Keow?s book, Think Out of the Block with Sudoku, offers the tools, techniques, strategies and processes for solving sudoku puzzles. Sudoku puzzles have been the latest craze around the world, and many people will attest to being infuriated, frustrated and befuddled by the number puzzle, created by American Howard Garns and which became a hit in Japan in the early 1980s.

Now Jeff Keow has claimed to have created a formula that is also a one-stop solution for every type of published sudoku puzzle. Keow, who is the chief executive and principal consultant of his own management training and consultancy company, admitted that he did not know what a sudoku puzzle was when he first saw it on his wife?s computer in December 2005, but once he got into it, he became addicted to the game. Now, a year later, he has published a book, Think Out of the Block with Sudoku , which he calls a ?sudoku handbook and manual.? His formula is named the ?KHS Formula 3 Plus 2.? In the book, Keow offers the tools, techniques, strategies and processes for solving sudoku puzzles, with step-by-step worked examples. » Read more

In less than a year the Sudoku bug has infected huge numbers of the UK population, and it is fast spreading across the world! Why has a simple logic puzzle become so popular, and how can your kids benefit? From a parent?s point of view, Sudoku puzzles are perfect for long journeys, waiting rooms, and rainy afternoons. They are being found more and more in the classroom as teachers wake up to their benefits and use them as time-fillers for children who finish early, as whole class activity, or as ?homework?. Indeed, the UK government-produced Teachers magazine has recommended that Sudoku puzzles are used in the classroom as brain exercise!

As well as developing your child?s logic and reasoning skills and concentration, Sudoku puzzles, if done at the right level, build your child?s confidence. Children of all abilities enjoy the challenge of a Sudoku puzzle, if the puzzle is age-appropriate. Using logical reasoning appropriate to his/her age, your child decides how to place numbers into a Sudoku grid. There is only one correct answer for each puzzle, no guessing is necessary.

Full Text at www.goodinfohome.com/Article/Boost-Your-Child-s-Brainpower-With-Sudoku-/89

The Department of Mathematics, National University of Singapore organized the first ever Sudoku competition in Singapore during our Mathematics Enrichment Camp of Tuesday, December 13, 2005. We had almost 250 contestants and the winner was Tan Zek Gian from Raffles Girls? School.

Tan Zek Gian from Raffles Girls?s School receiving the first prize from Professor Zhu Chengbo

Contestants at our Sudoku competition

There will be a lecture at the Mathematics Camp, but we hope to also conduct more lectures in the future. You can download a copy of the lecture notes. » Read more

Any demand you make on the brain is a form of benign, moderate stress that increases levels of the chemical messenger noradrenalin, which in turn boosts the rate at which connections form between brain cells.Scientists in Chicago recently found that the risk of developing Alzheimer?s disease was 50 per cent lower amongst a group of nuns and monks aged over 65 who were mentally active. To maintain and enhance intellectual function in later life, it is important to challenge the brain.Try: Stimulate your brain at work by solving problems, juggling a number of tasks or learning a new skill. If your job isn?t mentally challenging, or you no longer work, use your recreation time to embrace some of those tasks you once loathed at school – like solving a mathematical problem or learning history. Alternatively, you could join a community action group, undertake voluntary work or take up crosswords or Sudoku puzzles.

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