"Everyone was crouched over the dining room table all morning, doing these puzzles, nobody talking."

My mother relayed the situation at her house during a recent visit by her brother and his wife and daughter. A brother who had driven more than eight hours to reach her house. A brother whom she saw once or twice a year. A brother who had spent a small fortune in gasoline to visit for the weekend.

Yet, there his entire family sat, engrossed in a puzzle, sudoku.

As a fan of all types of puzzles from crosswords to word-finds, I didn't understand how they could just sit there and ignore each other while they completed the puzzles.

After perusing the directions, I was sent home with several pages torn from the sudoku puzzle book by Will Shortz to complete myself as well as several for my house guests. I was soon engrossed in the puzzle, as was everyone else staying at my house. The kitchen was dead silent, except for the occasional scratch of an eraser on paper. Within five minutes, the majority of us had become addicted to sudokus.

What is a sudoku? Simply put, it's a wordless crossword puzzle. Sudokus are a lot like crosswords in that only the truly confident will attempt the puzzle with pen in hand. I treasure my sharpened pencil with its ample eraser.

The game is laid out in adjoining grids. Players must figure out which numbers to put in nine rows of nine boxes so that the numbers one through nine appear just once in each column, row and three-by-three square.

Some of the digits are provided to guide you or sometimes stump you. The puzzle can be made easier or more difficult by varying the numbers given and their placement. I haven't exactly figured out what makes the "more difficult" puzzles more difficult because all the puzzles take me the same amount of time to finish.

The puzzle actually originated in 1979 in an American puzzle magazine. It didn't catch on though until it appeared in Japan and was renamed sudoku, which means "single number."

Just how popular is the game? According to an Associated Press article, Wayne Gould has written a computer program which randomly generates the puzzles. He's now a millionaire.

And there are six sudoku books on the USA Today Top 150 list. Three months ago there were none.

The puzzle is relatively easy to learn, but does require a brief synopsis of the rules to begin. Otherwise, guesswork and a lot of erasing comes into play, something my husband can verify.

While I was able to read the two pages of directions in the front of the Sudoku book, I handed him a copy of one of the puzzles and told him all of the directions -- or so I thought.

Only later than night, as he continued to struggle with his first puzzle, did he notice me whizzing through several over the course of the afternoon.

After noting that the puzzle cannot repeat the numbers 1-9 not only horizontally and vertically, but also within the nine interior squares did he finish the puzzle. Out came his eraser and he completed the puzzle soon after.

What is the problem with sudokus? Simply put, they're addictive because of their simplicity.

They're not large and complex like some crossword puzzles, which also require an extensive trivia base to complete.

They're relatively small in size so you figure you can complete one in a relatively short amount of time. Half-an-hour later, the laundry is not yet folded and you're still trying to fill in that middle square.

Finally, you tell yourself that you'll just complete this one puzzle and then go out to mow the lawn. Three puzzles later, the grass is still growing and you're still willing yourself to stop after this last puzzle.

-- Ronda Graff was given a book of 100 sudoku puzzles by her uncle from Kansas City. She's not sure if anyone sells them around here and hopefully no one does. The cleanliness of her house depends upon it.