Crossword puzzles across campus are feeling spurned as more and more people turn to the number game Sudoku to tease their brains.

The game that requires no math has become a staple in newspapers around the country, including The State News.

It was reintroduced to the nation last spring, according to an article about the game in the current issue of American Scientist.

Some students, such as accounting junior Sean Brennan, imported the game after spending the summer abroad.

"I went to Ireland over the summer and they had that all over the newspapers," Brennan said, who now has a Sudoku day calendar and completes about two puzzles a day.

Sudoku puzzles can usually take between 10 minutes and a half hour, depending on the puzzle's difficulty and player's skill, according to www.sudoku.com.

The goal of the game is to fill the number grid so that every row, every column and every 3-by-3 square contains the digits one through nine.

Former biochemistry professor Clarence Suelter, who learned the game during the holidays, said he lists the numbers possible for each box and goes through a process of elimination to find the best number for each box.

"The elimination is the way to do it rather than trying to start with one number and seeing if that starts the box because you can get yourself in a trap in a hurry," he said.

The more you play the game, the easier it becomes, said Brennan, adding that he's successfully completed every Sudoku puzzle The State News has offered since its debut this semester.

"If you play it a lot, you get patterns and you can figure it all out," Brennan said. "I play it because it's a mind-puzzle type of game.

"When you play and accomplish it, you feel smarter."

Sudoku challenges mathematics junior Andrew Hoard in a way crossword puzzles never have.

"I tried doing crossword puzzles before, but it wasn't really exciting," he said. "I couldn't get myself into doing that.

"Sudoku puzzles are probably the best I've gotten used to."

In fact, Hoard — who said he's never really been a fan of coffee — uses the puzzle to jump-start his brain the morning.

"Sometimes I just get up and I'm not in the mood to do anything, but doing the puzzle first thing in the morning gets me going," he said.

Hoard said he really got into the game in November and has been playing daily since then.

He gets his puzzle fix from newspapers and from www.websudoku.com, which has puzzles with different levels of difficulty — easy, medium, hard and evil.

Beginners should start with the easy puzzles found on the Web site, Hoard said.

"Don't try to go to the full-blown hardest possible because you're going to totally hate the game," he said.

"Make sure you start with the gentle one so you don't become discouraged."