{"id":5707,"date":"2011-03-26T14:56:23","date_gmt":"2011-03-26T19:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=5707"},"modified":"2015-11-16T17:26:55","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T22:26:55","slug":"on-peanuts-and-sudoku-puzzles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5707","title":{"rendered":"On Peanuts and Sudoku Puzzles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"312\" height=\"500\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/snoopy-sudoku.jpg\" alt=\"snoopy-sudoku\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-29507\" \/>I like Sudoku puzzles.  I love Charles Schulz&#8217;s <i>Peanuts<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>And, curiously, there is a book that combines them both &mdash; the <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Peanuts-Sudoku-Comic-Digest-Cartoons\/dp\/0740772481\">Peanuts Sudoku Comic Digest<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>I say &#8220;curiously,&#8221; because there&#8217;s nothing intrinsic in <i>Peanuts<\/i> that lends itself to Sudoku.  Schulz had passed away before the Sudoku craze became a craze, and there are no <i>Peanuts<\/i> strips of Charlie Brown puzzling out the numbers to impress the Little Red-Haired Girl.<\/p>\n<p>Still!  I managed to pick up the book inexpensively, on the theory that it would make a good challenge on the train during my daily commute, and the book arrived today.<\/p>\n<p>For the <i>Peanuts<\/i> fan, the book has fifty <i>Peanuts<\/i> comic strips published between 1993 and 1997.  It&#8217;s a random smattering of comic strips; none of them have anything to do with Sudoku, none would even inspire someone with a possible Sudoku solving technique.  Still, they&#8217;re amusing, if you like mid-90s <i>Peanuts<\/i> as I do.<\/p>\n<p><b>Digression On<\/b><br \/>\nYes, there are people who don&#8217;t like mid-90s <i>Peanuts<\/i>, who think the comic strip had grown tired and stale, with Schulz recycling his jokes.  I disagree.  Mid-90s <i>Peanuts<\/i> brought Rerun to the fore, which altered the role of most of the characters, especially with Charlie Brown becoming a role model to Rerun.  Yes, the book prints several strips with Rerun, and he gets great lines like this one: &#8220;I love the rules.  Once you know the rules, you can cheat.  What I always say is you can&#8217;t really cheat unless you know the rules.&#8221;  Or when Rerun wants to hear about Anna Karenina throwing herself beneath the train, rather than going crazy if his teacher &#8220;reads to us again about Dick and Jane.&#8221;  That Rerun, he&#8217;s so completely mental. \ud83d\ude42  No, mid-90s <i>Peanuts<\/i> isn&#8217;t the <i>classic<\/i> period (for that, look for BOOM! Studios&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?page_id=5702\"><i>Happiness is a Warm Beagle, Charlie Brown!<\/a><\/i>, which really <i>does<\/i> look like something out of the early 1960s), but it <i>was<\/i> an enjoyable period.<br \/>\n<b>Digression Off.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>And, of course, the book has 200 Sudoku puzzles, rated on a scale of Linus to Charlie Brown.  (Linus is the easiest, then Marcie, Snoopy is medium, then Lucy, and finally Charlie Brown is the hardest.)<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t tried any of them yet.  That can wait for Monday morning.<\/p>\n<p>My hunch is that the <i>Peanuts Sudoku Comic Digest<\/i> is a book for completists.  I wouldn&#8217;t run out and buy it if you need a Sudoku book; there are lots out there that are cheaper.  I wouldn&#8217;t run out and buy it if you need a <i>Peanuts<\/i> book; there are other and better collections of Charles Schulz&#8217;s masterwork.  But if you can find it for under five dollars, as I did, and you like Sudoku and <i>Peanuts<\/i>, it&#8217;s probably not a bad investment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I like Sudoku puzzles. I love Charles Schulz&#8217;s Peanuts. And, curiously, there is a book that combines them both &mdash; the Peanuts Sudoku Comic Digest. I say &#8220;curiously,&#8221; because there&#8217;s nothing intrinsic in Peanuts that lends itself to Sudoku. Schulz had passed away before the Sudoku craze became a craze, and there are no Peanuts<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5707\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Peanuts and Sudoku Puzzles&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[61,62,4099,68,4100,651],"class_list":["post-5707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comic-books","tag-charles-schulz","tag-charlie-brown","tag-peanuts","tag-rerun-van-pelt","tag-snoopy","tag-sudoku","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}