For the last year, the growing number of sudoku books has been a bit frightening; undoubtedly, with every publisher now thinking printing sudoku is kind of like printing money, a couple really suspect books would be released. Well, as this trend has continued, I've finally compiled my Top Five Worst Stretches in Sudoku-Publishing Space*:

1. Pat Sajak's Super Sudoku Featuring Code Numbers - When I first saw this just after returning from Lucca, I was sort of floored. I'd put it at about 50:50 that Pat Sajak does not even know he has a Sudoku book out there let alone what a Sudoku puzzle is. And "Code Numbers" - well, its sort of like "buying a three" - you don't just get one number, you get them all at once.

2. SpongeBob SquarePants Sudoku Books (of which there are 3) - Its odd that this character went from pissing off the religious right to teaching kids to recognize logical patterns and visualization. Hopefully, sudoku doesn't start to piss off the religious right by proxy. I tentatively put these books on the list - in part because there are 3 of them - as the connection seems a little weak. However, with 200+ stickers inside, kids may just start to love puzzles and so I applaud the use of marketing if it does some good.

3. The Sudoku Code* - The gimmick of this book is like a lot of others on the market nowadays. Put a drawing of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and the word "Code" on the cover and cash in on a publishing phenomenon of a completely different sort. Here, the 200 puzzles give you a message which lets you solve a meta-challenge to crack the code and win - of all phenomenal prizes in the world - a button. Just what I need. A button. Maybe it will get me into GeekCon XXII for free. I'll pass.

4. ESPN Baseball Sudoku - I got a prerelease version of this book given to me at a recent event and must admit I'm still trying to piece together what game of darts put these concepts together. Let's put some sudoku puzzles in a book with ESPN on the cover and just change 1-9 to be the nine positions in baseball. Nothing more; no trivia, no real connection to baseball, just C, P, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, LF, CF, RF. I'm sure a lot of copies will be bought on discount as stocking stuffers for sports fans; I have my doubts if any will be converted to puzzle fans.

5. O'ekaki: Paint By Sudoku - While the others got me stewing, this bothers me the most. In part, it is because Tetsuya Nishio's name is on the book and he should know better. This is just a dangerous dangerous book and hopefully will not start a trend. For years, we have had the puzzle "Paint By Numbers" which goes by many other names in many other countries. You get a set of constraints on the outside of a grid of squares which let you paint some cells black to eventually form a picture. This puzzle requires some logical skills, but is not at all sudoku. If "Numbers" and "Sudoku" are now interchangeable, I worry about what will come in the future. Will there one day be crosswords marketed as "Numberless Sudoku puzzles now with WordPlay(TM)"? Shudder. Of course, I don't like Will Shortz considering sudoku to be "wordless crossword puzzles" either. Imagine you just ran across that term and did not know it meant a sudoku. Wouldn't you think of a cross-sums puzzle first? Nomenclature is important. Lets call a (sudoku/crossword) a (sudoku/crossword) and not confuse any other puzzle involving i.) numbers and/or letters, ii.) boxes, iii.) using a pencil or pen or gluestick, as a (sudoku/crossword) if it is not.

But that's just my opinion, and maybe I should stop being derisive of the puzzle that has given me a tiny bit of attention.


* To be fair, I am not rating the quality/difficulty of the puzzles in these books necessarily, just their gimmicks. Although nothing can really save Code Numbers.