What is a Sudoku? A Sudoku (as explained here in the Wikipedia) is a number/logic puzzle that involves placing the numbers 1 through 9 on a 9-by-9 grid such that no number appears twice on the same row, column, or specially marked 3-by-3 box. Perhaps the real puzzle is why it should have become such a pop sensation in places from Hong Kong to New Zealand to the UK. Here is some coverage of the story from the BBC and Guardian. Nevertheless, a phenomenon it certainly is, and I am not one to shrink from hopping on the bandwagon.
I have been interested in brushing up on my Java skills, and this Sudoku craze has given something good to chew on. With that in mind, I have created Sudoku Satori, the Sudoku solving assistant. Try it out and let me know what you think. It’s in a pretty rudimentary state right now, but it sure works when it comes to solving these puzzles. It’s a simple matter to have the computer solve the puzzle for you. What this tool does is help you see the patterns so you can understand and solve the puzzle (hence the satori part).
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber 
My wife’s parents, her brother, and his wife have descended upon the house for the Christmas vacation. The house is now filled with conversations in English and Mandarin.
These folks are avid game players and, of course, have recently fallen to the Sudoku craze.
At this point, I can only reliably count up to four in Mandarin (ee, urr, sang, seww (sort of rhymes with ‘eww’ as in ‘eww, yuck’ when said in a Minnesota accent when for some reason you chose not to say ‘ish’, q.v., but I digress)).
This means that I am limited to being able to follow no more than four-ninths of the conversation emanating from our computer room these days.
I guess I’m going to have to learn some more numbers.
Yours sincerely etc.,
–JMike
p.s. one of the Sudoku programs has a learning mode for children, where the board is four 2×2 cells rather than nine 3×3 cells. The in-laws are working very hard on my son Jamie, now three-and-a-half, to get him to understand this version. I think they’re jumping the gun a little. But he sees that something very interesting is going on and is really trying hard to grasp it.