Sudoku Bondage

I first noticed Sudoku puzzles on my flight to Indiana last November for the National Missionary Convention. They had one in the in-flight magazine, and I tried it and kinda liked it.

Then, when I got disoriented in the Circle Center Mall in downtown Indianapolis and came out onto the wrong street, I walked into the Barnes & Noble to get directions, and I saw they had a sale on Sudoku books. So I bought a couple beginner-level books for my flight home.

For Christmas, my daughter (in a moment of unintended wickedness) bought me this book:



It's not just an ordinary Sudoku book with lots of puzzles to solve. It's an evil Sudoku book with lots of puzzles to solve, and when you've done them all, you still haven't finished. That's because each pair of puzzles has its own puzzle-within-a-puzzle. And all the puzzles-within-a-puzzle together are another puzzle. Here's an example:




See how the puzzle on the left has all the 9's circled? That's because the puzzle started with a circle in one of the empty squares (third row from the bottom, center column). When the number puzzle is finished, whatever number is in the starting circle, you circle all of that number in the puzzle. Then, when the letter puzzle on the facing page is solved, you circle every letter whose position corresponds to the circled number on the left page. Then you write down all the circled letters (on this page it's, "PARTICULA").

By reading all the messages you've written at the bottom of every page, from the front of the book to the back, there's supposed to be some sort of clue to figuring out the ultimate puzzle answer. That answer is three words that you write on the instruction card at the back of the book, and then you mail that in, and they'll send you a pin that says, "I cracked the Sudoku Code."

I'm probably not going to mail in the answer, because I don't need another piece of trash to throw away. But I can't not figure it out.

So I'm doomed to solve all 100 pairs of puzzles, read the whole message at the bottom of all the pages, and figure out the final three words. At about 2 - 3 pairs a week, that's going to take forever.