# Apologies To Mario And Luigi

People often ask me if I play video games. Today for example it came up in conversation with my brother, and my friend Susan. Amazingly, I somehow must lack the video game gene because I just don’t have any desire to play them (at least, not the modern, 3-D, graphically rich, story driven games that exist today). Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy them from time to time, but not on a regular basis.

For me, video games hit their pinnacle with Super Mario Brothers. That, or I hit the ceiling of my video gaming skill set. Whatever. Some of us are meant to get their thrills by staring at equations, and some of us are meant to get their thrills by engaging in epic battles with gorgons and other such beasts. Clearly I’m the former.

But this isn’t to say that I don’t like electronic games. Of course I do. But my list of go-to games is more on the nerdtastic side. Sudoku for example. Or KenKen. My iPhone may also have the Scrabble, Scramble, and Sporcle apps. Scrabble is exactly what you think it is. Scramble is essentially a matrix of letters and the goal is to form as many words as possible before time runs out. Sporcle is a portable version of the online set of quizzes that I talked about in a previous post.

Anyway, why is this important? Well, it’s not in the grand scheme of things. But the other day I was playing Sudoku on my iPhone and I managed to finish the game in record time (as indicated in the picture). I couldn’t be more pleased with myself.

Could finishing a logic puzzle in $\pi$-time be any more perfect? I think not.