Chances are if you do not live under a rock or in the middle of nowhere, you have heard of sudoku. It is logic oriented puzzle game that has risen in popularity over the past couple years. The sudoku game board is a collection of nine 3x3 grids, which make up a larger 9x9 grid. The goal is to fill each column and row in the 9x9 grid with an unordered sequence of the digits 1 to 9 (no duplicates numbers in a given row or column), such that each 3x3 grid has the digits 1 to 9. Each puzzle, depending on the difficulty, starts off with a few numbers filled in each 3x3 grid. Using the process of elimination and logical reasoning and deduction, one is able to complete the puzzle. It is a mind boggling game that makes one think, and it has people across the globe addicted! If you haven't, jump on the sudoku band wagon.

As for this review, it covers Carol Vorderman's Sudoku. It is a digital sudoku puzzle game for the PSP. The game has also been released on the home PC and PlayStation 2. The host, Carol Vorderman, is best known for her career on English television game shows. In the last few years, she has been very popular in the sudoku world, authoring various books and guides about playing the game. Carol Vorderman's Sudoku is perfect for sudoku puzzle gamers on the go who do not want to carry around big puzzle books and pencil/eraser. However, if you already own the 2005 sudoku PSP release Go! Sudoku, then this one does not offer much more to be worth your while. Regardless, Carol Vorderman's Sudoku is a pretty fun game and a convenient way to play the game.

For novice players, learning how to play is not a difficult task. This game comes with several video tutorials to learn how to play. The most useful tutorial for newcomers will be the walkthrough of a puzzle from start to finish. The tutorials consists of "A Basic Explanation of Sudoku", Carol describes the rules of the games, "Tips For Easy Puzzles", Carol talks about tips for beating easy rated puzzles, "Tutorial: An Easy Puzzle From Start to Finish", Carol gives a walkthrough of an easy rated puzzle, and "More Hints and Tips", Carol provides additional tips to become the master (four tips for medium puzzles, one tip for difficult, and six tips for super-difficult.) On the flipside, if you are an experienced player, the tutorials probably won't be very beneficial, although the advanced tips maybe useful.

In addition, one of the benefits of this game is the novice level assists. There are options to turn on auto pencil-ins, row/column highlights, errors flagging, and rule-break warnings. When learning to play, these options can be very useful to help fully see your options and mistakes. Also useful for getting to know the game is the "Sudoku Solver", which is an empty puzzle that you can fill out and let the game solve for you.

As for game play, "Sudoku" has both single- and multi-player modes. The single player mode has four options: "Classic", "Arcade", "Career", and "Challenge Carol". "Classic" is your average mode. A random puzzle of the selected difficulty (easy, medium, difficult, super-difficult) is selected from a pool of over one million puzzles. "Aracde" has four modes: "beat the clock", complete the puzzle before the clock runs out, "extra time", get bonus time for entering the right number, "perfection", every mistake and pencil mark subtracts time from the clock, and "3 strikes", three mistakes and it is over. Lastly, "Career" and "Challenge Carol" are two separate collections of puzzles. Beat all of the puzzles to obtain the title of Sudoku Master.

The multi-player mode has three different options. They use the PSP's ad-hoc wireless capabilities and hot-seat. In "Head To Head", two players compete against each other to finish the same puzzle first. The match is conduct with two players via ad-hoc wireless. "Quickfire" is a hot-seat game, two players share a PSP unit. The players take turns inserting numbers into the same puzzle. The goal is to complete the puzzle with the shortest amount of time. "Time-Attack" is another hot-seat game. Two players take turns on the same PSP unit to complete separate puzzles. Each player is allotted a fixed amount of time per turn. The time can be configured difficulty for each player, which allows a handicap for unequaled players.

Overall, Carol Vorderman's Sudoku is a solid puzzle game for on-the-go-gaming. It also has the perfect features for novice players who want to learn more about the game. While I am no novice to the game, I still enjoyed the meat of it. I find playing on the PSP a lot easier than using a puzzle book and writing utensil. Being able to digitally pencil-in numbers is much nicer than using a pencil/eraser. The only drawback I had with the game was the lack of an option to clear the entire board; there are times when you have messed up so badly it is best to start with a clean slate. Instead you can only quit and exit the puzzle and start an entirely new one over. In the end, this game is a great buy with a low M.S.R.P. of $19.99.