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Playing the Numbers Game 数字游戏新旋风

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If you haven’t heard of Sudoku, chances are you will soon. It’s fast becoming a daily necessity for millions around the world. In essence, Sudoku is a numbers puzzle presented on a grid consisting of nine 3-by-3 sub-grids. The purpose of the game is to fill in the sub-grids using only the numbers one to nine. It sounds easy, but it’s not because each number can only appear once in the rows and columns of the larger grid.

如果你还没听过数独，可能很快就会听到了。它正快速地成为世界各地数百万人的生活必需品。数独在本质上就是一种数字猜谜，它是由九宫格所组成。游戏的目标是将一到九的数字填入九宫格里。因为每个数字在这九个九宫格中的每一行、每一列都只能出现一次。

Though the name Sudoku is Japanese – it means “single number” – the first puzzle was created by American Howard Garns in 1979. The first Sudoku in Japan came out six years later. In 1986, the game finally began to take off when the amount of numbers already in a puzzle, called “givers,” was restricted to less than thirty.

虽然sudoku这个字是日文—表示「只出现一次的数字」，但第一个数独谜题却是美国人霍华加纳斯于1979年所设计的。至于日本第一个数独游戏则是在六年后才出现。1986年时因为游戏规定提示总数须少于30个，数独这游戏才流行起来。

In 1997,retired New Zealand judge Wayne Gould bought a Sudoku book while visiting Japan. He was soon hooked. Back home, he wrote a computer program so that he would have enough puzzles to last him the rest of his life. Later, he persuaded the editor of a major British newspaper to publish his Sudoku puzzles. Today, hundreds of papers carry the puzzles, and Sudoku books are bestsellers.

1997年，纽西兰退休法官韦恩古德在旅游日本时买了一本数独的书，很快就迷上了这个游戏。回国后，他写了一套计算机程序好让自己在往后的日子里有足够的游戏可玩。他后来甚至说服了英国一流报刊的编辑刊登他的数独谜题。现在，有数百万种报章都刊载这种猜谜游戏，而数独的游戏书也成为畅销书籍。

Sudoku’s attention lies in having the right combination of challenge and simplicity. It does not require a broad range of knowledge like a crossword, but it does require logical thinking. And the number of puzzle combinations is unlimited. Well, okay, it is only 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960. But that’s more than enough to keep Wayne Gould and millions of Sudoku fans very happy.

数独的魅力在于它巧妙地结合了挑战与简易的原则。不像填字游戏需要丰富的知识，数独要求的是逻辑思考。数独谜题的组合数目视无法胜算的。嗯，好吧，就说只有6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960种组合。而就是够让韦恩及数百万数独迷「非常」满意的数字了。

−By Adam Moser & Colin Gread

Vocabulary

puzzle [ˋpʌz!] n.（游戏的）猜谜

retired [rɪˋtaɪrd] adj. 退休的

hooked [hʊkt] adj. 着迷的

persuade [pɚˋswed] v. 说服，劝服

logical [ˋlɑdʒɪk!] adj. 合逻辑的；合理的

More Information

in essence: 在本质上  basically; essentially

grid [grɪd] n. 格子

fill in 填入, 填写

rows and columns  直行与纵列

take off【口】(指观念、产品等)突然大受欢迎

was restricted to 受限于....

lie in  位于

trillion: 1,000,000,000,000 (one million million; 10¹²)

quadrillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000 (one thousand million million; 10¹⁵)

quintillion: 10¹⁸

sextillion: 10²¹