Pretending that I am an Expert

I think I have done it to myself.

You may recall that for a few years, I have played Sudoku in the morning. Typically, I have played two games. First, I play a Hard game allowing myself to make notations, and that usually takes around 20 minutes. Then I play a Medium level game, sans notations. That usually takes 10 minutes, give or take.

A half hour isn’t bad. I am retired after all.

I recently decided to try the Expert level. I probably shouldn’t have done that little thing.

I have played Expert level before but decided not to continue because it can take a lot of time.

But I recently tried expert level again and then again and . . .

. . . and I might be hooked.

Sigh.

At every level there is a gradation of difficulty, and you never know what you are going to get on any given day. Hard games, for example, can range from almost medium difficulty to almost expert. So although my average time for Hard is just slightly under 20 minutes, a game may take me any time between 10 and 30 minutes.

But a normal, median time on this blasted Expert level seems to come in at about 45 minutes, and some games have taken a little more than an hour. Yesterday was a treat because I completed it in just under 32 minutes.

What have I done to myself? I seem to feel driven to keep playing at this level, and I do have the time, but . . . well, I don’t quite know what.

So while the world is consumed with Wordle and is posting daily results online, I have gone in a different direction.

I did try Wordle and even introduced the game to Sue and possibly a few others, at least by extension. Now, Sue plays and posts her results daily while I soon tired of the game. Some of my capitulation was due to the luck of it. A lucky first guess could lead to solving the puzzle in 3 tries. Less luck at the beginning could result in using up all 6 tries. While I did always manage to complete the puzzle on every one of my games, I decided that I didn’t want to keep at it.

Once again, I march out of step with the rest of the world.

Addendum: Go figure. I wrote the above on Friday. Yesterday, sudoku gave me a very easy Expert level puzzle, but in effect, it was really only hard level difficulty and not even very hard at that, for I solved it in 19 minutes. I imagine there will be payback when I get to it later this morning.