The EVIL Distraction!

Here's another challenge for you all. Name the thing that recently has started sucking up all your time.

For me, it's easy. It's an insane game called Sudoku, which seems deceptively easy. All you have to do is fit the numbers 1 through 9 into little boxes.

The catch is that each digit appears only once in each row, column or 9-box group. There are 9 nine-box groups in the puzzle.

Oh, sure, they lure you in with the easy ones, where all you have to do, basically, is count the numbers in the boxes and fill in the obvious blanks! That makes you feel like a genius.

And then...

Before you know it ...

You're hooked!

You may find yourself stealing off to the break room with the newspaper and a pen -- it has the same sort of academic thrill that working the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink has.

Starting on Monday, many newspapers suck readers in with the "easy" level puzzles. And many don't realize that it progresses to "intermediate," "advanced" and "F@*@#% HARD!"

Sometimes you'll do a Google search and find the online "Web Sudoku" site. You can select the level of difficulty you'd like. I still maintain, however, that the site has a cookie which remembers which puzzles you've worked and surreptitiously jacks up the difficulty. Kind of like boiling a frog in a pot of water -- just turn up the heat a notch at a time and he'll never notice until it's too late.

Yeah. Just call me Kermit. Well done.