"All you have to do is use process of elimination, and you’ll be a pro at it in no time," says my 8-year-old daughter, Abby, looking over my shoulder.

One hour later, I am still scrutinizing columns, rows, and boxes within boxes, searching for clues and patterns, muttering to myself, and resisting the urge to make a guess. I sigh, and Abby looks up from her own puzzle book. "I’ll give you a lot of extra hugs if you can really do that," she says.

I have been hearing about this game for months. It’s called Sudoku, and both my mother and daughter are hooked on it. Mom does the puzzles in the daily newspaper, and Abby has solved more than 100 kids’ Sudoku puzzles since her grandma introduced her to the game. Sudoku fever has swept the United States this past year, after attaining phenomenon status in Britain and, before that, Japan. People are playing the game in newspapers and online, on their phones and in dollar-store books. There are Sudoku card games and chat rooms and competitions. Yet as much as I’ve heard and read about these puzzles, I’ve never done one — until today.

The standard Sudoku puzzle is a 9x9 grid made up of nine 3x3 boxes. The goal is to enter a number from 1 through 9 in each of the 81 cells in the grid so that every row, column and 3x3 box contains only one of each numeral. Some of the cells are already filled in, and these "givens" are the clues needed to complete the puzzle.

The Sudoku puzzle in today’s paper is a White Belt, the "easiest" level.

I’ve been working on it for two hours, and I’ve done so much erasing I’m starting to wear a hole in the newsprint. Fortunately, I’m interrupted: Daughter 2 is up from her nap and calling.

After dinner, I try some easier puzzles. I start with a Level Five "Brain Boggler" in one of Abby’s books. It’s fun! I complete it in 15 minutes and venture on to Level Six. It’s called "Major Meltdown" and for good reason; after about two hours I’m on the verge of one. This puzzle is even more frustrating than the one in the paper because I get really close to completing it — only two missing numbers — but every solution I try creates a problem somewhere else in the grid.

The next day, I tackle another Level Six. I’ve developed a new method, and it carries me along, until I get stuck, make one guess, fill in the related cells, and, then, amazingly, I’ve solved it! Abby is so proud. She writes, "You did it" with 10 exclamation points above my puzzle. I zip through another Level Six with my new method, and when my husband comes home from work, Abby brags about my success. I turn to the next puzzle to demonstrate, but this time, my method doesn’t work.

Now I see what makes this game so addictive. There is no method that works on all puzzles. Sudoku players develop their own strategies and tricks, some "hard" puzzles are easier than some "mediums," luck can be involved, and some solutions seem only to materialize when you stop working on the puzzle and go back to it later.

Some predict that, like the Rubik’s Cube of the 1980s, Sudoku will be a passing fad. I think it has the potential to stick around much longer, and I hope it does. As time-squandering addictions go, Sudoku is as good as it gets. The game requires practice and patience, precious commodities in a world that seems increasingly focused on instant gratification. Sudoku puzzles can be done anywhere, by anyone. They help children develop important skills such as logic and reasoning; for senior citizens, they may help ward off Alzheimer’s by exercising their minds.

As for me, well, I don’t know if I have the patience or the skill to become a Sudoku Black Belt. But I’ll definitely have more patience with Abby when she doesn’t come upstairs to set the table the first time I ask — at least, when Sudoku is the source of her distraction.

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Lisa Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Oneonta. She can be reached at lisamiller44@hotmail.com.