Sudoku
Did you know? If you type "devmodeon" on your Kobo eReader's search bar and press enter, you'll turn dev mode on and have access to a variety of extra features: Landscape mode, additional viewing options, sudoku.
Did you know? Adding fucking sudoku on your Kobo is the perfect way to stop fucking reading. Guess who am I talking about?
Funnily enough, I've never been a sudoku enthusiast; I used to prefer pictograms, and Super Mario Picross has had a grip so deadly on me and my free time that 1) my wife1 jokes2 about it often 2) I haven't touched a picross game since then. I know I'm not that strong. Surely sudoku won't have the same effect on me, right? WRONG
Did you know? Sudoku difficulty levels are not based on how many numbers are already there, but on the techniques you have to use to solve them. Two popular standards are the Sudoku Explainer Rating and the HoDoKu Rating: the former judges a sudoku on the hardest technique required to solve it, while the latter assigns a score to each technique needed to solve it and sums them following a set order of steps. I've found that sudoku.coach explains both quite clearly, and it's also where I've learned about it. You see, some harder sudoku always push me to a point where I feel like I have to bruteforce at least a number and then hope I didn't mess it up, something that's happened to me in picross too. I looked it up and discovered sudoku has advanced techniques. What the fuck is a 3D Medusa man.
Turns out sudoku.coach has a "campaign mode" made to explain all techniques starting from the ground up. Just reading about them wasn't enough for me, and the site has a "hint" button that suggests using a specific technique while you're solving it, so it's really helpful in learning how to apply what I'm learning. Unfortunately, I have started dreaming of Hidden Doubles and Naked Triples, and the quality of my sleep has deteriorated.
I've gotten much faster and better at solving sudoku on my Kobo, though, and I'm finding the interface less than ideal now to apply intermediate techniques. Maybe it's time to use my eReader to read again.
I was at her place's when I finished 999 and I had to solve the infamous sudoku at the end... and I didn't know the rules. She did it for me. Many years have passed since then.↩
She now has started calling me "Chess Queen", after the Italian title for "The Queen's Gambit". She's also insisting I watch the series.↩