SUDOKU KEEPS CONSUMING ALL SPARE BRAIN TIME.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

Iraq burns in new and terrible ways each day. Britons are still shaken and mourning the dead from the bloody terrorist attack a couple weeks ago. Suicide bombers are probably at this moment plotting more attacks. They could strike here or anywhere.

And then there's Emily, the hurricane of biblical proportions that's smacking Mexico with 145-mph winds and heading straight for Texas.

And somewhere at this very moment, a cute kid with big, sad eyes is probably succumbing to starvation.

With all this heavy stuff going on in the world, I should feel bad. At least feel a little concerned. I would, except there's little room in my mind for anything but the basics of eat, work, sleep and avoid gun-toting motorists on the 101.

Why? Because all my spare brain time is now being diverted into pondering such dilemmas as: ``Does a 9 go in the second box of the third row, or a 3?''

Those with the same shameful addiction know exactly what I'm talking about. The rest of you will soon. The Sudoku craze has hit America (can you say ``sue-doh-koo''?) and once you take that first hit, you're sure to be hooked for life. Or until you lose your short-term memory.

Over the past year, the Japanese numbers puzzle craze swept England and its affiliate countries of Australia and New Zealand, where it runs in the daily papers. There are Sudoku clubs, chat rooms, strategy books, video and mobile phone games, competitions and now even a Sudoku game show.

As was inevitable, Sudoku's nine-by-nine-square grid began turning up in U.S. newspapers in recent months, elbowing aside the steadfast veterans like the crossword puzzle and bridge columns.

Crossword puzzles have never been my bag. Who can remember what year the war of 1812 began when you have the lyrics for the entire works of ``Weird Al'' Yankovic crowding up your brain's storage files?

But solving Sudoku doesn't rely on whether or not you slept through modern European history in college. If you have any sort of intelligence and basic logic skills (if I do this thing, then that thing happens) you can play and, theoretically, win.

The Daily News and USA Today both launched the daily puzzle on Monday, July 11. By that afternoon, after a quick introduction to the deceptively simple rules of the game, I was hopelessly hooked. I found myself sneaking to the comics page before I even cracked the news section in the morning. I just want to get the first number, I told myself.

By the following Monday, I wasn't even pretending I wasn't going to try and solve the whole thing before continuing on to the important things like how the War in Iraq is going, whether Karl Rove had been dumped by President Bush yet or the name of the newest Supreme Court nominee.

The Brits even have a name for the affliction: ``Compulsive Sudoku Syndrome.''

I may have this CSS, but I don't care. I'm giving my brain a workout that it never gets from watching TV or reading a Harry Potter book or making dinner. Scientists have found evidence that doing puzzles and logic challenges helps build up our ``cognitive reserve.'' Build up your reserve in your youth and you keep mental deterioration at bay as you age. Don't, and say hello to senility.

Besides, using logic on a regular basis helps people avoid such treacherous situations as the ones that begin with the thought, ``I wonder how many Big Macs I could eat in a row.''

I'm not ashamed of having CSS. In fact, it's one addiction that might actually do all Americans some actual good.

Mariel Garza

mariel.garza(at)dailynews.com