Optimistic people are sometimes said to view the world through a pair of rose-colored glasses, and it follows that adding a splash of color to everyday life can be a true, natural mood-booster. Sudoku is a timeless game that is universally loved by people of all ages - so, why not play the game in color!? What’s stopping us? We love all versions of Sudoku, but sometimes the games in our life need a bit of spice, pizzazz, and color to give some extra razzle dazzle that makes for a unique gaming experience. Kubiya's Colored Sudoku Set is a perfect example of what happens when a classic game receives a unique twist to broaden its accessibility, popularity, and endurance as a staple of the strategy game community.
Kubiya’s Version: A Closer Look
Kubiya's interpretation is a gorgeous, wooden version of the popular Sudoku game. The organic rubberwood is crafted by hand, and vibrantly painted in multi-color. What's more, because of the design, the game can be played over and over, making it the perfect gift for any and every Sudoku enthusiast - especially if that Sudoku enthusiast is concerned about their carbon footprint. We love opportunities to reduce, reuse, and recycle beloved games!
The Colored Sudoku Set comes with a challenge sheet divided into 4 levels (easy, medium, hard, and very hard). Each level has 5 different patterns (a total of 20 challenge patterns in all). The set also comes with a color conversion chart, which can help you convert any sudoku you find online or on a newspaper into Color Sudoku - just use this color chart we provide to convert the numbers to colors and place them on the board. There is no end to the fun, because even after the original set-ups are exhausted, there’s always a way to keep the fun going!
Colors & Learning
Anyone who hasn’t realized the importance of colors in the learning process, just hasn’t seen the light yet, sometimes literally! If colors aren’t important, how could you explain traffic lights, safety signs, and the field of graphic design? Colors are all over the place, in our everyday life, to help us process information and make connections in our brains. The gaming world is no exception.
Color, as part of the electromagnetic visible spectrum, is energy in one of its purest forms. Color is also a wavelength, and colors have their own magnetic frequency! Don’t panic and start to tune out the science babble, it’s worth it! Did you know that colors can affect neurological pathways in the brain? And, that they can create a biochemical response in your body? This means that literally just by looking at a color, you could be changing the chemistry of your own brain. This brings a whole new meaning to having a favorite color, and why rainbows bring so much joy! Faced with this evidence, it’s clear that color has been overlooked for way too long. Basically, every color has a specific wavelength, and each of these affect our body and brain in a different way.
Using the right color in the right place can seriously and legitimately affect feelings, attention, and behavior while learning. Color-coded patterns improve memory, and learners are able to recall images in color more easily than images in black and white – it seems like witchcraft, but it’s science!
Color in Sudoku
You might already be able to see where this is going, and you’re probably right! By color-coding Sudoku, the new system makes the game accessible to a whole new crowd of people, and keeps the original fanbase happy at the same time! Some people’s brains are able to operate in color much better than numbers. So, by replacing the numbers 1-9 in the original Sudoku game with their own unique color, players can perform at their highest level of brain function without sacrificing the integrity or difficulty of the original game!
The interaction between the shifting color pegs and the logical deductions of the Sudoku puzzle solver is also an illustration of ways that computer programmers are constantly trying to create code that is more compatible with an actual human brain’s approach to problem-solving. Humans, of course, are not machines, as much as we may try to be! On this matter, Dr. Steve Russ of the Empirical Modelling group with the University of Warwick said:
"Traditional computer programs are best-suited for tasks that are so well-understood they can, without much loss, be expressed in a closed, mechanical form in which all interactions or changes are 'pre-planned'. Even in something so simple as a Sudoku puzzle, humans use a mixture of perception, expectation, experience, and logic that is just incompatible with the way a computer program would typically solve the puzzle. For safety-critical systems (such as railway management) it is literally a matter of life and death that we learn to use computers in ways that integrate smoothly with human perception, communication and action. This is our goal with Empirical Modelling."
Dr. Russ speaks very technically, but he’s basically stressing the importance of creating new, slicker ways to solve our problems that flow smoothly with the ways our brains are naturally wired to operate. Why fight the tide, right? Your brain is not a perfect computer, even though we sometimes wish it was. If color-coding helps, let’s take advantage wherever we can! The Kubiya Colored Sudoku Set is a prime example of starting with a beloved, cerebral game, and then adding a unique, beautiful, human adaptation to improve the player’s experience. But, at the end of the day, if you like the numbered version better.....well......we sell that too!! Kubiya accommodates everyone’s unique style and flair.
In general, we simply hope that you never forget how vital color is to the human experience. A vibrant diversity of color is a huge part of everyday life and each person’s perception of that life. It’s important to take advantage of this as much as we can. Who knows, maybe after reading this you’ll find yourself radically rethinking the colors you surround yourself with - in school, your home, and maybe even in your collection of games and puzzles. Live your life in color, and dare to be different!