CUCKOO FOR SUDOKU In the coffee shop and at the kitchen table, Mainers toss aside the crossword and pick up addicting game of logic

How do you Sudoku?

In a plane or on the ground? All alone or with friends around? In the paper or on a screen? At home, at work or in between?

Whatever your puzzle pleasure, you’re not alone.

Sudoku, the addicting logic game, has created quite a buzz in Bangor and beyond since its introduction last year. An article in the United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph stated, “Sudoku are to the first decade of the 21st century what Rubik’s Cube was to the 1970s.” The Times of London called it the biggest thing since crosswords.

It’s a simple enough concept. The puzzle consists of an 81-square grid, divided into nine separate nine-square grids. Each square must be filled with a numeral from one to nine, with no repeats within the grid, row or column. A few numbers are filled in to get you started, but from there, it’s up to you. And it’s totally irresistible.

“I knew the puzzle would be popular,” said Wayne Gould, the New Zealand native who popularized the puzzle in the United Kingdom and the United States. “What I didn’t foresee was the craze of it.”

Part of its allure is the fact that it doesn’t use language. It’s easy to understand, and you can start playing it immediately, without reading a complex set of rules. And though it incorporates numbers, it’s not a numbers game – it’s a logic puzzle.

“The rewards are great for very little effort,” Gould said.

Gould, a retired judge who now lives in Hong Kong, bought his first sudoku puzzle book in Japan in 1997, and spent six years developing a computer program to supply himself with the puzzles.

Last year, he began syndicating the puzzle in the Times of London. His version of the puzzle – there are dozens of others – now appears in 231 papers in 55 countries.

“It’s different than anything we’ve had,” said Gould. “In the last 80 years, crosswords and word games have dominated the newspaper market. Sudoku is a logic puzzle.”

Oh, and it’s pronounced soo-DOUGH-koo, by the way.

But the morning crowd at the Blues Cafe in Orono doesn’t care how you say it. They only care how you play it. It all started when Chez Cherry, a designer and breakfast regular, brought in the puzzle. Pretty soon everyone in the restaurant had sudoku fever.

“I just did one puzzle and that was it,” Cherry said.

“I’m hooked, as well,” Camas Sader, who manages the wait staff, chimed in. “Everybody who comes in here is fairly addicted. The crossword was the thing before this.”

On any given day, three or four people at a time will be sitting at the granite bar, coffee in one hand, pencil in the other, intently staring at the newspaper. They often help one another out, and it’s usually a reflective, relaxing time. But tempers can flare when someone is stumped. One day, Sader came in to start her evening shift and saw a sudoku sitting on the bar with scribbles all over it. Cherry had spent the morning trying to crack the puzzle, but he couldn’t, so he left, but not before venting his frustration with his pen.

“A lot of that’s luck,” Sader said. “Whether or not you stumble across the key for the puzzle. But you never really know until you get into it.”

And people really get into it. Just go to Borders, which carries more than 50 titles – along with a handful of page-a-day calendars and one board game – on sudoku. Inventory manager Greg Westrich said the books started arriving in August, and now, three of them are on the paperback best-seller list. Three of the store’s top-10 calendars are sudoku-themed.

“It’s kind of hard to miss, there’s so many of them,” Westrich said. “For a game or a puzzle thing, I can’t remember that happening.”

It has dominated the bookstores in airports, as well, and on a recent flight from Cincinnati to Bangor, the attendant served up soda, snacks and sudoku advice.

The puzzle has become as common as briefcases on the commuter rails in the United States and the United K., and there even are sudoku championships. The winners can complete what the Times of London calls “super fiendish” puzzles in under 14 minutes. It takes Gould, who wrote the program, anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to complete a very difficult puzzle.

The crowd at the Blues Cafe has stopped doing the easy puzzles altogether. But don’t expect them to start holding competitions over breakfast.

“That’s a bit too competitive,” Cherry said. “It’s more Zen than that.”

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.