Meet Dr. Ryutu Kawashima

I've had better days (23), and I've had worse days (54). I tried it once in French (62) and a few times in German (66) and once in Spanish (72).

I gave the Partnerin a Nintendo DS and the Braintraining software for Christmas because it had an electronic version of Sudoku. Yes, I can hear you all out there saying, "Yeah ... sure, you got it for the Partnerin." Really, I did. She loves sudoku.

She stopped using the brain training side when I scored 25 and she scored 55. To her cedit, she was also doing it in English, but I think she hates being competitive with me. In typical male fashion, I usually don't give being competitive with her or anyone else a second thought until it is too late ....

I think the only time I ever avoided being a complete jerk was when we were golfing in Florida on a nice sunny day on a course between the Banana River and the Atlantic Ocean ... the Partnerin was having a horrible round, but stuck in there apologizing for taking so long on the first two holes, so from three on I had the good sense to start flubbing so we could enjoy the day together. I sometimes need to remember I have compassion.

Not with this machine, however. Dr. Kawashima is a hard taskmaster, adding new puzzles and new twists to the old puzzles as you get better. The problem for the Partnerin is that results are shown against the best results of all players on the machine (max of 4), so it is difficult to get up there in the top three if you aren't highly competitive and training every day.

I must admit I do see a difference ... my brain has been getting lazy here in Germany. Then the other day my boss was calculating away on the whiteboard with calculator in hand and he got it wrong. I stopped him and said, "No, that should be 783." And he replied, "But I calculated it with the machine."

"Well, you did it wrong. Do it again."

Jaws dropped around the room. Yep, 783. If I didn't have a nemesis before, I probably have one now, but I have to get him to fire me somehow so I can finally move to London ;)

And the devil in me loves the notoriety.

The ugliest confession of this post: I have actually started to play Sudoku, and I kind of like it.

Oh No!