Hanjie = Sudoku for artists?

I recently found out about Hanjie when my dad took my sister and I out to Borders to see if we can find any more good clearance deals. It's such a shame that Borders is no more than a memory now. Sure there's Barnes and Noble, but when a bookstore chain goes down, it's a sad occasion for me.

Anyway, I found this book full of 100 Hanjie puzzles and thought to myself, "Now that's a fun looking Japanese puzzle if I ever saw one". What makes Hanjie fun is that the object is simple (use the numbers provided to fill in the gridded squares to produce a cute, if not, pixel-ly picture that you can then admire for about a minute upon solving it), but the game itself is mentally stimulating, and gives the solver a sense of accomplishment and something to show for his/her time and effort. What do you have to show from a solved Sudoku? Just another 9 x 9 grid full of numbers (no offense).

So far, in a matter of days, I've solved about 15 puzzles all by myself. There are plenty more puzzles that my sister Bettina did by herself, we worked on together, or we started but got stuck on them. It's great fun collaborating on a Hanjie puzzle with my sister, because sometimes one of us sees something the other one didn't, and we're a great team.

Doing puzzles like Hanjie are fun, but I do in fact miss posting up original art of my own. So, in the near future, expect some more creative posts from your's truly. Thank you for reading, and see you soon.

Fun Fact: Hanjies are also known as nonograms and pixel puzzles!

To learn more about Hanjie puzzles, go to the Wikipedia article here! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanjie