AskOxford: Sudoku and happy slapping

Over recent weeks sudoku number puzzles have been cropping up all over the pages of British newspapers, broadsheets and tabloids alike. Although these fascinating (or fiendish) puzzles go by a variety of names and spellings (Codenumber in the Daily Mail, Su Doku in The Times, and even Sundoku in the Sun's version), the game itself is the same.

It consists of a square containing nine smaller squares, each subdivided into 9 small boxes (81 boxes in all). These boxes contain some of the numbers from 1 to 9, filled in by the puzzle's creator. The solver has to use logical thinking to complete the grid by ensuring that each of the nine internal squares contains the remaining numbers between 1 and 9, but also - and here's where it starts to get tricky - that each of the nine vertical columns and horizontal rows in the overall grid contains the numbers from 1 to 9, without repetition.

Although sudoku (pronounced soo-doh-koo) is a Japanese word, the puzzles themselves actually emerged in the late 1970s, under the name Number Place, in Dell Puzzle Magazines of New York. A Japanese puzzle magazine publisher, Nikoli, noticed Number Place, made a couple of changes, and renamed it suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (literally 'the numbers are restricted to single people'). As this hardly tripped off the tongue, it was shortened to sudoku (roughly translatable as 'single number', referring to the fact that each number from 1 to 9 can appear only once in each row, column, or internal square).

The first sudoku puzzle was published in Japan in 1984 and was an instant hit. Its popularity in the UK has been attributed to Wayne Gould, a New Zealander who set up a website devoted to the puzzle and introduced it to The Times in the autumn of 2004.

As is often the case with words borrowed from other languages, sudoku is cropping up as an English plural form (sudokus) and has even morphed into a verb: one blogger wrote 'I take no responsibility for loss of friends or family as a result of sudokuing too much', while Can you sudoku? appeared as a headline in the Daily Mail. With The Times promising a mobile-phone version, we're eagerly awaiting the first appearance of mobdoku, while it can only be a matter of weeks before sudokuholics start to seek help for their addiction.

Happy slapping

Before the beginning of the year, anyone in Britain confronted with a 'happy slapper' might have expected to meet a jolly, brash woman with a reputation for sleeping around. However, those who fall victim to the unpleasant new activity of happy slapping (also known as happy slappy) are likely to come away bruised and battered. Happy slappers (usually teenage boys) hunt in packs, looking for an unsuspecting Norman (victim); while one or more members of the gang hit the slappee (assaults can range from a thwack with a rolled-up magazine to kicking and punching), the others capture the attack on video or camera phones. The images are then sent to other mobile phones or posted on the Internet.

The craze is said to have its roots in TV programmes such as Jackass, which shows sketches in which people inflict pain on each other for fun, and a TV ad campaign five years ago for the Tango^TM orange soft drink. These ads featured a fat orange man running up to unsuspecting people and slapping them on the head - the catchphrase being 'you know when you"ve been Tangoed'. A spate of copycat attacks by children around the country led to the ad being dropped, although the catchphrase lives on, and now refers to people whose garish orange fake tan makes them look as if they've been drenched in the soft drink. Let's hope that happy slapping suffers the same fate as the Tango^TM ads, and gets slapped down by the authorities as quickly as possible.