[meowmeow]

I keep a big book of Sudoku puzzles next to my bed. I've found that doing a couple puzzles before I go to sleep helps me relax because I have to concentrate enought that I stop thinking about all the other stuff of the day. My theory was that while I might lay there restlessly mulling over the house renovation, work stuff, family stuff, there's no way I can lay there and mull over a Sudoku puzzle.

However, I've also found that when I get totally stuck on a hard puzzle and just put the book down, turn off the light and go to sleep, that the next day if I pick up that same puzzle, I will suddenly just whip out all the answers. It's kind of weird - I always wonder, how could I not see that solution last night...

[The_Reader_David]

Thanks for that story. I’ll remember that, since Sudoku puzzles are now the ‘hymn tunes of mathematics’ as Hardy once called chess puzzles: a large portion of the general populace now amuse themselves by finding existence and uniqueness proofs. (I chuckled the first time I read ‘no math is required’ in the instructions to a Sudoku puzzle.) Now I have a basis for suggesting that non-mathematicians can and do have the same experience.

The phenomenon isn’t so suprising when ‘sleeping on it’ applied to some life decision—dreams sometimes mirror life so the ‘it came to me in a dream’ phenomenon, even when the dream is forgotten doesn’t seem so odd. But when it’s a matter of pure discursive reason like a mathematical proof (Sudoku puzzles included) is seems very strange.

I’m not sure what the fact that the unconscious mind seems to reason says about things like strong AI, the nature of the mind, or the existence of the soul, but it’s certainly curious to think about.