Sudoku: Hooked?

Asahi is bringing the latest puzzle craze into pubs. Phil Mellows reports.

If you've been thinking your customers have been a little quiet lately, blame the Japanese. They are probably engrossed in a sudoku, the oriental number puzzle that has taken the nation by storm over recent months. Stationer and bookseller WH Smith reports that sales of pencils, the indispensable weapon of the sudoku warrior, have soared by 300 per cent, driven by the ones with rubbers on the end.

You'll find sudokus in all the national newspapers. Books of sudokus are piled high in shops. Most of all you'll see sudoku players with their pencils and strained expressions at work on public transport - and in public houses. You'll even find a sudoku in The Publican Newspaper (see Chaser, page 67).

Now Japanese beer Asahi is aiming to help licensees make the game a little more sociable by putting sudokus on beer mats and announcing Britain's first national sudoku tournament, the 2006 Asahi Pure Logic Championship.

According to the brilliantly named Moto Suzuki, sales and marketing general manager for Asahi Beer Europe: "The sudoku challenge presents an excellent opportunity for licensees to add value and boost their business by tapping into a current craze."

You can try anything from simply putting some puzzle cards on the bar and asking for a donation for a favourite charity to organising a full scale Japanese theme evening.

You could include a sudoku round in your weekly quiz or run a sudoku contest for teams, raising money for charity at the same time. You could even challenge another local pub to a sudoku showdown.

More ideas for taking advantage of the sudoku craze, plus guidelines for running a competion, are included in the special Asahi pack which also has sets of sudoku beer mats and puzzle cards plus posters advertising the national championship which will take place next February with first prize of a trip to Japan.

• Licensees can register for an Asahi Pure Logic Sudoku pack and find out more about the championship by telephoning the hotline on 01622 604604, emailing fhqbxh@rqjneqfuneirl.pbz​ or visiting the dedicated website www.asahibeer.co.uk/sudoku​.

Know your sudoku​

• Sudoku is a Japanese word. Su means "number" and doku means "single" or "bachelor" - but that doesn't mean it can't be a team game!
• In Japan number puzzles are much more popular than word puzzles
• Sudoku reached craze status in Japan in 2004 and spread to the UK through the puzzle pages of the national newspapers
• Sudoku is not a mathematical or arithmetical puzzle, it works just as well if the numbers are substituted with letters or other symbols.

How to do sudoku​

You don't need any skill at arithmetic to become an expert at sudoku. It's all done by logic. A nine by nine crossword-style grid is divided into nine three-by-three squares and the sudoku compiler fills in some of the numbers. All you have to do is use the numbers one to nine to complete the grid so that each number appears only once in each row, column and three-by-three square.

Players use a range of techniques to help find the solutions in the fastest possible time - welcome to the world of crosshatching, slicing and dicing, pencilling in and a host of other crafty methods of putting the right number in the right cell or box in the puzzle grid.

You don't have far to look for more help in how to tackle the brainteasers. Some of the best-selling books at the moment are dedicated to sudoku techniques and top tips. And keying "sudoku solutions" into an internet search engine will reveal websites galore offering help.