Anna 1, Anna 2...

I don't usually do the blog post prompts that I receive. I'm rebellious that way. This was a challenge to write about a number. It got me thinking about numbers which is something I don't usually do, and so I

decided to rebel against my rebelliousness.

But which number should I pick? Number 2? That's the number of times I've attempted this blog post. The first time I was almost finished and then one wrong stroke cause the entire post to be erased. I tried to retrieve it but a black hole closed up around it. How about the number 7? That's how many kids I have. Pick up your eyeballs from off the floor and put them back in your head where they are more useful. Yes, I have 7. And I did it the hard way. 1 at a time. If I had been smart I would have had them all at once, got my own reality show, and been on dancing with the stars. I don't have them anymore. I killed them all. Are you still reading? Okay, I didn't kill them all. The thought just crossed my head every now and again - like the time child 4 stuck a home made bomb in my freezer. But that's another story. Nope, they all survived, grew up and moved away leaving me alone to face 8 - which is a number meaning eternity. I could talk about the number 9. That's how many grandchildren I have and that's from only 3 kids. Imagine how many I'm going to have. And I won't feel like killing them because I can always hand them back. I could talk about Pi, because I like pie. And I've often wondered how someone came up with the arbitrary number of 3.14 that is the equation to solve all the problems in the world. Which led me to thinking about Sodoku. Did you see the connection? Nope. Neither do I now, but at some point I had a connection but I'm 56 so I forget things. Sodoku is a puzzle that uses numerals. However it is not a math puzzle. That's right, a number puzzle that isn't a math puzzle. It's a logic puzzle. You would think that a wordsmith like me would like crossword puzzles best. But no, my favorite is logic puzzles. Those are the ones that go something like "you have 5 houses in a cul-de-sac. Each house is a different color. There are a different number of kids living in each house, and each house has a different pet. From the following clues, determine which family lives in which house, what they eat for dinner on Tuesday nights, and what crime did they commit on a Saturday night for fun." Now a math logic puzzle would go something like this... "There are two trains hurtling towards each other on the same track. One train is going a 100 miles an hour and left from Pittsburgh at 9am. The other train is going 60 miles an hour and left from Chicago at 11 am. Assuming the track is one straight line and doesn't make any stops but requires people to run and hop on, figure out what time these two trains crash into each other, and how many people die based on train accident statistics and the velocity of the crash. And what's the name of the train conductor." Sodokus don't do that. A Sodoku is a puzzle made up of 27 squares in a 9x9 grid. Further within this grid are 9 smaller grids made up of 3x3 squares. In each puzzle there will be a handful of random numerals throughout the grid. Your mission is to put the numerals 1-9 into the grid without having the same numeral in each horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line or within each 3x3 grid. Why isn't this a math puzzle? Because there's no math involved. No addition or subtraction or multiplication or using pi to save the world. It's all about logic. You could replace those numerals with letters, or symbols, or pictures, or colors, and it would still be a solvable sodoku. They just picked numerals because they're easier than asterisks and ampersands. Those numbers mean nothing. Although you don't need pi to do a sodoku, eating pie while doing a sodoku is highly recommended. And you don't even need alcohol like you do with the math problem. Tea does nicely. Now I want pie.