Beastie: Polluted Sudoku Abomination

In the world of Beastly numerology, the mind can play tricks. That's why I run through my multiplication tables whenever I can, just to keep the old bean counter in shape.

But the other day I noticed a trusted friend poring over a new number game in the newspaper. The game had a foreign-sounding name: Sudoku. I warned my friend against the insidious influences of New Age oriental ideas, and yet I was intrigued.

It seems the game is similar to the ancient Latin Squares puzzle. But it's infused with concepts like combinatorics, permutation group theory and "Samunamupure constraint types." Something was obviously amiss here. This wasn't jibing with the New Math I learned in sixth grade, that's for sure.


Could this new puzzle craze actually be a ploy of Satan to divert our attention from discovering the Number of the Beast?

There was certainly one way of finding out.

I cleared away the offending newspaper page that contained the "Sudoku" game and carefully fed some phrases into the Beastie Machine.

The word "Sudoku" itself seemed innocent enough (totalling a mere 336). The mystical Japanese name for the puzzle, "Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru," proved way too large at 1,020. "Unholy Sudoku puzzle" numbered only 567, while "infernal Sudoku puzzle" was over the line at 886.

"The abominable evil Sudoku puzzle" came closer at 660, while "virulent Sudoku puzzle" gave the interesting--but unusable-- number 777. Wait-- 777 is the sacred number of completion. Could Sudoku be a good thing?

I had to pause, drawing on knowledge I gleaned from my research into Sumerian base-12 number systems used by ancient idolatrous peoples. I ate a Reece's Pieces, and meditated on the oneness between unity and particularity. I chewed on a toothpick, and then sorted and discarded some junk mail.

Suddenly, a phrase came to mind, which I fed carefully into the Beastie Machine.

The words "polluted sudoku abomination" forced the machine to shudder and disgorge like a worn-out slot machine in Reno. The numbers were 666, which perfectly aligned with the Book of Revelation, and, more importantly, with my own suspicions.

Tomorrow I'll e-mail Will Shorts with the news: Sudoku, like all other popular fads, is a proven tool of the Devil.


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