Maths Nerds

I thought it was pretty nerdy, in kind of a cool way, that a lot of the PhD students at my old uni played Sudoku. I had never heard of the game before. It basically entails filling each row and column of a 9-by-9 square grid with the numbers 1 to 9. In the beginning you are given a couple of clues, that is numbers, and you are expected to complete the rest ensuring that a number only appears once in each row and column.

Admittedly, the things are pretty addictive although I think I only ever completed one properly out of my four or five attempts. If you so desire you can have a different Sudoku everyday. But that's only using 9 numbers. Today I saw they, probably the pure mathematicians (the nerdiest of them all) has gone one step futher and play Hexadecimal Sudoku. For those not in the know, the hexadecimal number system is a 16-base system used mainly, I thought, in computing and engineering circles. It uses the numbers zero to nine and the letters A to E.

Pretty nerdy, eh? These guys definitely have too much time on their hands. Unlike me who's busy...