Oh Sudoku, how I love thee

On a long flight the other day I decided to do one of the "Very Hard" labeled Sudoku puzzles in my Sudoku puzzle book. This isn't just any Sudoku book, this is The Original Sudoku book by Nikoli Publishing.



They say that not only are these puzzle all hand made with the designer planning your every move, they also encourage you to admire and appreciate the beauty in the symmetrical layout of each puzzle.

OK, that's good and all, I just want to do the puzzle. Now, it took me a while to do this very hard puzzle, a little over an hour, and I can only attribute that to my being distracted by the beauty of the puzzle. Toward the end of the puzzle I hit what I thought was an impasse. I even went as far as writing the possible numbers in the corner of the box which I try to normally not do. Even after doing this I could not figure out the next move. I was about to quit and mail the puzzle back to the publishers, telling them I found the puzzle to be impossible, but then I saw it, the move that the book calls "Master Pattern 2." As I chuckled to myself for having missed such an easy pattern I realized that the guy who wrote this puzzle was also chuckling at me. Nikoli, you really did anticipate my every move.