Who would have thought that so many people would find themselves entertained by putting numbers in boxes?
The trend for Japanese number puzzles which began with Sudoku shows no sign of ending. Far more people now are familiar with there being only two ways to express 12 as the sum of four different integers than there were ten years ago.
24 is 7+8+9
23 is 6+8+9
22 is 5+8+9 or 6+7+9
And so on.
And as each of the nine squares, columns and rows must contain the digits 1 to 9 once and only once we know that each row, column and square must total 45. Much closer to the ultimate answer than 42 ever was.
What is the fascination? For me I think it is keeping the brain ticking over in order not to think about other things because, peculiarly, it is when I am not thinking about other things but am thinking that solutions to other things tend to occur to me.
It is a very zeitgeisty way to wait, hope and rest.
Don't know what a slide rule is for
But I do know one and one is two
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