Guest Author - Megan Romer

Do You Sudoku? by University Games is the board game world's response to the craze that is sweeping the world - sudoku! For those of you who aren't familiar with sudoku puzzles, they are a simple (but delightfully deceptive) style of logic puzzle where the player must try to arrange the numerals 1 through 9 in a 9x9 grid so that no number repeats itself in any given row, column, or 3x3 box. Many people are put off by the fact that they look like math puzzles, but in reality there is no math involved, just plain logic. The puzzle could be done with letters or even colors instead of numerals.

The Do You Sudoku board game brings these puzzles to a competitive level. Each player or team is given a gridded clear plastic tray and chooses a puzzle, which they fit under their tray. Then both players or teams race to complete their sudoku first, using number tiles that fit into the grid. Simple? Yes. Fun? Definitely!

The game comes with 100 puzzles that you can lock in to your grid, but we discovered pretty quickly that we could also play the game using puzzles from any number of the sudoku books that are laying around our house (we're big fans). How? Well, there are two sets of number tiles: one red, one blue. If you stick the blue number tiles on one player's grid as their "solid" numbers, and the reds on the other, and then switch colors, you'll always know which numbers are solid because they'll be the opposite color from the colors you're using.

DO YOU SUDOKU AT-A-GLANCE:

GAME BOX INCLUDES: 2 Clear Plastic Grids, 81 Red Number Tiles, 81 Blue Number Tiles, 6-sided Die (Used to select difficulty of puzzle), 100 Sudoku Puzzles

YOU'LL NEED: Nothing, although you may want to collect some blank sudokus to play the game with when the first 100 puzzles have been played.

SUGGESTED RETAIL PRICE: $19.99

TRY IF YOU LIKE: Sudoku!

PERFECT FOR: A holiday gift for your favorite sudoku solver; it's almost brand new so it's very unlikely that they'll already have it!

RATING: Four and a half logistical assumptions out of Five