SPIEGEL Surfs the Web Puzzled by Su Doku?
The puzzle is said to be so addictive that it will keep you up all hours of the day and night. Certainly it will hamper any attempt to do a proper day's work. Its genius lies in its simplicity. Players must enter numbers into a grid so that every row, column and 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. A number of digits are already entered onto the grid to help you and there is only one solution. Puzzles range from the simple to the mind-bogglingly difficult.
The first puzzle appeared in The Times in November 2004, brought to the UK by Wayne Gould, a retired judge, who became fascinated by Su Doku having discovered it in a Japanese puzzle book seven years earlier. The game of logic quickly achieved an avid following, which prompted many other British newspapers to follow suit and publish their own puzzles. Puzzle games, as exemplified by the crossword, breed loyal readers, who prefer to complete the same type of puzzle each day and therefore stick to the same newspaper. Newspaper editors desperate to sell more newspapers realized they had struck gold, and a Su Doku war ensued.
The publishing phenomenon shows no sign of abating. Newspapers, books, websites and mobile phone companies have embraced the puzzle with undisguised glee. One bright spark has even invented a puzzle solver , to aid the lazy or assist the canny in winning a myriad of prizes offered by publishers for the correct solution. The puzzle now looks set to conquer the world, with American newspapers looking to get in on the act. A craze is born.
Take Three for Ground Zero
The third time, famously, is the charm. That, at least, is what New York officials are hoping. On Wednesday, a new design (the third) for the tower to be erected on Ground Zero in Manhattan, was unveiled. If built, the 1,775-foot skyscraper would be the tallest in the United States and would cost an estimated $1.5 billion to build. But, the new design of the so-called "Freedom Tower" -- by architect David Childs -- is supposed to be much safer than the last, designed by Berlin architect Daniel Libeskind. Its base is further back from the sidewalk -- to prevent truck bombs -- and the foundation will be reinforced. While the design is intended to evoke the grace of the original, not everyone is happy with it. Indeed, it loses almost all the mystique of the Libeskind original . But New York governor George E. Pataki isn't one of them. "New Yorkers have always reached for the sky," he said at a Wednesday press conference. "And we'll never stop."
Ground Zero's Freedom Tower: Take Three
Blogging Live8
We'll be partying down the street from the Brandenburg Gate this Saturday when some of the biggest names in music (okay, a lot of the smaller ones, too.) come to Berlin to fight poverty in the developing world. But if you're not able to make it to one of the Live 8 cities -- there are still plenty of ways to participate in Sir Bob Geldof's massive, multinational Live 8 festival. First, you can watch live streams of all the concerts in every city at America Online. While watching, in another window, you can read about the very important issues being raised at Live 8 -- increasing development aid and forgiving debt in Africa and other underdeveloped regions to put an end to poverty. And in another window, you can do your part by pulling up the special site Technorati , where you can connect with other people to talk about global poverty and what you can do about it. So far, they've collected more than 9,000 posts.
