Roman Sudoku

Now that I have proved myself to be a dud in crosswords without external help and other things related to life, I decided to do something about the situation. With more time on my hands, and with little progress on the crosswords front, I diverted my attention to the other popular daily newspaper puzzle, Sudoku. However, don't for a moment think that I am good at Sudoku. Somewhere in my earlier posts, I had mentioned about how the Sudoku mafia had totally put me off Sudoku. So the return to Sudoku was kind of ironic. Like the return of the prodigal puzzle solver. Rather, an amateur 'puzzled' solver. Sudoku always tested (and continues to test) my limited mental faculties. And also my very limited patience. Whenever I try to solve a Sudoku puzzle, I end up with enough mistakes that the grid becomes one big mess of scratches and dirty ink blots. It never ceases to amaze me that I commit a mistake (or mistakes) that stares right back at my face but I am not able to figure it out until it's too late. So much so, that I finally throw the newspaper away in disgust. So it was high time I fixed this. And worked on my patience too.

Roman Sudoku :-)

Thus started a train of thought. It was a long train and a whole lot of thought went into it (about 2 minutes worth of it) and just when I was about to give up, it hit me like a Roman column falling on my head! (just like that legendary apple that fell on a scientist's head) Why not use Roman numerals as opposed to Indo-Arabic numerals? Ancient Romans, like me, must have hated Math. And Indo-Arabic numerals (maybe because they did not invent them). And maybe that's why they tried to demystify counting by using the Roman alphabet instead. Of course, they didn't know about the zero '0' but who needs a '0' in Sudoku. And that's exactly what I planned to take advantage of. I decided that I will use Roman numerals to fill in the Sudoku grid instead of the regular numbers. You see, when you think of it, it kind of makes sense. For example, it is far easier to change a '2' into '3' when you use Roman numerals. Suppose if I put 1 instead of 2 or 3, all I would have to do is add another 'i' next to 'i' or add 2 'i's to make a 'iii'. If its a 4 then its still easier. All one has to do is add a 'v' on the right of 'i' without striking anything off. So, 'i' can transmogrify to 'ii', 'iii','iv', even 'v', etc., and sometimes even 'iii' can be changed to 'iv' (with a little bit of artistry, of course). But then you would ask, what if it was a 1 instead of a 2? Well simple, all I have to do is strike off one 'i' and the grid will still have one 'i' standing. At least it won't look like a messy ink blot anymore. And with practised hands and a little creativity you can change 'iv' to 'v' (or 'i') or 'vi'. Or 'iv' into 'ix' and vice versa. I am yet to figure how to change 'v' to 'i' but eventually I will get there. But I guess you get the drift. At the end of it, I'd still have a reasonably clean grid and a solved puzzle. Veni, vidi, I solved!! Nice, no? Ave, Caesar! Or is it Q. E. D.?