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I still remember the first time I ever encountered Sudoku. I was at a café, flipping through a newspaper, when a strange grid of numbers caught my eye. At first glance, it looked like an unintelligible jumble—rows, columns, and little boxes filled with digits. Yet, there was something hypnotically neat about it. The rules seemed simple enough: fill each row, column, and 3x3 square with numbers from 1 to 9, without repeating any. Simple, right? Ha! I would soon find out that simplicity is deceptive.

I picked up a pencil and tentatively started filling in the blanks. That initial encounter was thrilling. There’s something oddly satisfying about slipping a number into the correct square, like placing the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle. At first, I stuck to the easy puzzles—mostly because I wanted to experience the joy of completion without feeling my brain melt into a puddle. Each correct number made me feel clever, like I had unlocked a tiny secret of the universe.