by Telemachus Gaffiganiakis
July 19, 2006
John Nash, the mathematician whose life was arguably glamorized by Hollywood in the 2001 Academy Award-winning film, A Beautiful Mind, has a new fight to deal with in his life: his hold on his mathematical intelligence. The film depicts Nash's fight to overcome schizophrenia, which according to the movie, includes many instances of delusions of grandeur, a common symptom among most mathematicians.
In this case, Nash's newest fight deals with the very beauty of his mind. "I'm starting to lose my grasp on the same abilities that earned me a Nobel Prize. Age is catching up to me, I suppose," comments the 78-year-old Nash. "I worked so hard in game theory, and now it is a very different type of game that is destroying me. Oh, the horror, the horror!" What game has been the cause of much ire for Nash? None other than Sudoku.
"I refuse to call it by its real name," said Nash. "I now call it Kudos, because you can rearrange the letters in the name of the game and toss away one of the U's to get Kudos, which is a delectable granola bar that I love to snack on in my spare time. There was a time when I could solve Kudos puzzles in less than a minute. As I've aged, the speed has gotten slower. Now, it's to the point that I'm struggling to even solve them. My wife can watch several episodes of a Law and Order marathon on TNT before I decipher one of these puzzles."
While Nash may be frustrated, at least he can now feel like the general public does when they look at a Sudoku puzzle rather than feel like a misunderstood genius who gets smacked in the face by women at the bar and imagines he's having conversations with that albino fellow from The Da Vinci Code movie. "I don't want to be like the general public," Nash commented. Well, as long as he keeps doing Sudoku puzzles, then he'll be nothing like the general public who tries their hand at the game for five minutes before quitting to do the Daily Jumble.