Ten years ago I didn’t know where to look. When I got up, I longed for the night again. I went to a psychologist and told about my restless and at the same time listless mood.
“What do you need?” she asked. To my disappointed look, she said, a little apologetically: “That’s what we as psychologists ask in such a case: what do you need.”
Disappointed, I went to my sister. “What do you need,” I said with a shrug. “Is that all that a century and a half of psychology has brought us? I want to know what the world needs from me! What my earthly task entails!”
“Do you know what you need?” said my brother-in-law. “A sudoku.”
I struggled, but he stood his ground and taught me the rudiments. He had his own notation system, with dots representing the numbers, like on a die.
I was hooked in no time. I lay on the couch for hours a day solving sudokus, much to Thijs’s disgust.
“What if I sat for an hour every day and called it meditation?” I said.
After about four years I was at level six, but then I reached a limit. My brother-in-law was stuck at level five and I didn’t know anyone else who made sudokus.
Reports I put away my puzzle books.
A while ago I said to Thijs: “I don’t know, I feel so, yes, what should I call it, rushed and tired at the same time.”
“Go see that psychologist again,” Thijs said. “That helped so much at the time.”
“That was the beautiful time of the sudokus,” I mused. “Remember that wonderful trip through Canada?”
“Yes, that was terrible. You didn’t even look up to see the Northern Lights.”
“There must be a lot more people like me,” I said. “There are sudokus in every newspaper. Will those people stay on the same level forever?”
“Look on the internet”, said Thijs.
That was an idea. ‘Solving difficult sudoku‘ I typed. And verily! A nice Chinese gentleman explained to me in crystal clear English the techniques of the X-wing, the Y-wing, the Bug and the Unique rectangle. It took me months to master the formulas, but then I shot through to level nine, the black belt of sudoku skills.
That saved a psychologist, but cost me a vacation.
“I’m going to Kew Gardens for a few days,” Thijs said one day. “But I’m going alone. You’re just going to be doing sudokus anyway.” He grabbed his coneflower and his plant guide and left.
He came home a few days later happy and rested. “There’s something wrong with you,” he said, holding me at arm’s length. “Have you been to the hairdresser? No, I know: you don’t have a sudoku book in your hand!”
That was right. I had broken down on the Swordfish and the Forcing chain. Oh, to find a soul mate and talk about sudokus long after sunset… Would there be sudoku talk groups?
Nicole Mizee is a writer and replaces Frits Abrahams during his vacation.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of July 27, 2022