Sudoku, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a highly addicting number game that will cause you no end of sleepless nights as you solve puzzle after puzzle in an attempt to find the secrets of the universe. Well perhaps that’s overstating the goal a bit but at least I find it highly addicting and have trouble setting the game down once I’ve started playing. The advent of the PSP version has saved me the expense of all those pencils and erasers I had to buy to play the non-electronic version of the game.

For those of you who have never played Sudoku, here is the game in a nutshell. You have a grid that is 9x9 with 9 mini-grids of 3x3 within it. The goal of the game is to place the numbers 1 through 9 in each row, column and box. If you would like more information on the game, there is a great write up of the history of Sudoku and basic strategies on Wikipedia.

Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku has a number of various games that you can play, they are all Sudoku just with different twists. In the Single Player mode you can select the Classic style of play which gives you the Sudoku board with a number of the fields filled and your job is to fill in the blanks as quickly as possible. You can select the difficulty which will determine how many of the fields are already filled in, the difficulties available to you are Easy, Medium, Difficult and Super-Difficult.

The Arcade mode will also give you a number of options: Beat the Clock, where you have to solve the puzzle in the given amount of time; Extra Time, a variation of Beat the Clock where you get extra time for each correctly placed number in an empty field; Perfection, where you want to complete the puzzle as quickly as possible with as few mistakes as possible, each mistake will add time to your clock; and 3 Strikes, where you have a three Vorderman lives and each time you make a mistake you loose a life. Each of the Arcade mode games can also be played at varying the difficulties listed previously.

The Career mode is a challenge mode for you to test your Sudoku skills, there are seven “belts” each with a number of Sudoku puzzles which much be completed to move on to the next “belt” once you work your way up to the coveted Black Belt you will be on your way to becoming a true Sudoku Master.

The last single player mode is Challenge Carol, which is a continuation of the Career mode and will take you from the 1st to the 4th Dan in Sudoku Masterhood. If you can complete all of these puzzles you will be a true Sudoku Master, with all of the rights and privileges that such an auspicious title bestows, but watch out, you may find yourself being hounded by other aspiring Sudoku Masters who will wish to dethrone you. But just think of the fame and fortune that awaits you, press tours, TV spots, book deals and maybe they will make a movie about your rise in the Sudoku arena….

When you play the game, make sure to check out the Game Options as well. If you are having difficulty with a puzzle, or just need a little help learning how to play the game, there are some very helpful options available to you in the Assists section. Auto Pencil Marks will put hints into the empty fields that will show you what numbers could possibly go there. Sometimes there is just one number scribbled, sometimes there are two or three. Broken Rules and Errors will highlight the numbers that you choose when you make a mistake in placement. In the controls section I would highly recommend that you choose Control Method 2, it makes the selection of numbers for entry much easier.

There is also a Multiplayer version of the game. Head To Head allows for wireless play between two PSP’s. Quickfire is a multiplayer game that uses a single PSP, each player takes turns inserting a number into the grid, the winner is the player that has the shortest time when the puzzle is completed. The final multiplayer game is called Time-Attack, in this game each player takes turns inserting values into the grid. Each player has a limited amount of time for his/her turn and can insert as many values as possible until the timer is up for that turn. Then it moves to the other player. Each player has a different puzzle to complete. The winner is the player that completes his/her puzzle in the shortest amount of time.

Moving on down the Main Menu options you will come to Tutorial Videos. These videos have some of the most complete and concise descriptions of the game of Sudoku I have seen. That and for all you Carol Vorderman fans out there, you get to see her in action as she explains the game. And no, we are not to the Carol Vorderman part of the review yet. The Tutorial Videos will explain the rules of Sudoku to you, give you tips for completing easy puzzles, run you through completing an easy puzzle from start to finish and finally. The videos will give you hints and tips for completing Medium through Super-Difficult puzzles. And don’t forget, the videos feature Carol Vorderman…

Game controls are about as simplistic as a video game gets. You move the cursor around the grid until you reach an empty box and then you select the number you want there and hit the X button. There are options for backing up and inserting pencil scribbles which will help you solve the more difficult puzzles.

The UI is also fairly simple. The puzzle grid takes up a majority of the screen with the number selector box in the upper right hand corner. There is also a clock/timer and the bottom right corner sports a grid that shows you how many of each number have been used in the puzzle. This can be especially helpful as the puzzle gets filled up and you start to loose track of which number your working on or which numbers you still have as yet to put into the grid.

The game is easy to play, though perhaps not easy to finish and with the tutorials the game is easy to learn. Though the game is about as non-violent as you can get, it may still not be appropriate for the younger crowd. My 7 year old keeps trying to play it and gets horribly frustrated as he is unable to complete the puzzles. If you are looking for a game that will suck you in and keep you stuck, this is a good one.

Now then, who is this Carol Vorderman anyways? Well for all you Brits out there you probably already know. For all the rest of you though here is what I’ve found out about her. Carol Vorderman is the Vanna White of the British Game show scene. She has been on a long running game show in the UK called Countdown. Though that is not all that she has done. Apparently she has also been on a number of other British game shows, has written a number of books, including a DK book on math for kids. One source mentioned that she was a member of MENSA, which implies that she is scarily smart.

All things considered, with the resume that she has, I can quite happily say that yes, Carol Vorderman is cool and if she has made a Sudoku game for the PSP (which she has) then it is most assuredly a good game and one you should go out and get. If your interested in more info on Carol Vorderman, head on over to Wikipedia (again) and check out what it has to say about her. And on a side note, isn’t Wikipedia cool?