IT USED to be the Griddler, a sort of numeric puzzle resulting in a drawing resembling a chart for cross-stitch embroidery. Now it's the sudoku.

If you haven't come cross the sudoku, count your blessings.

The only way I can get a glimpse of the daily paper nowadays is to wait until Sir puts it down for some vital operation like answering the phone, then grab it, turn it right way out and sit down with myself, possession being nine points of the law.

At least the Griddler features only in the Sunday paper. This wretched sudoku thing is in every day and no day can get under way properly until he's got all the numbers written into their squares.

There is a block of nine boxes, each containing nine squares. In some squares in each box, numbers are pre-printed and the trick is to fill in the other squares with numbers so that, across the three-by-three grid of nine boxes, and down it, each row and each column contain all the numbers one to nine. Still with me?

If you are, you'll realise that the catch is that each box also has to contain all the numbers one to nine, so there can be no repetition of a number within a box, across a row or down a column.

Now you might think life was a bit short for that sort of timewaster. If you do, you're in my gang and resistant to this craze said to be sweeping the country. Sudokus are featuring in papers from red-top tabloids to the solid and serious.

I simply can't see the point. But then, I'm told it's a logic puzzle and I could never do those logic puzzles where filling in a grid worked out that Fred was the one who took a blue suitcase to the bus station, so I'm quite prepared to believe I'm not up to speed on logic. Nor were figures ever my thing.

"Shall I explain it to you?" Sir offered at 10pm one evening. "Pointless," I said, and I didn't just mean that I wouldn't understand it at that time of night.

And yet, looking at the sudoku he was offering to explain, my eye was drawn irresistibly to a misspelling in the clueless, guess the letters, crossword he'd completed beneath it.

That's my thing. Crosswords, and preferably those with cryptic clues. The sort where "Frenchman" in the clue means there's an M in the word; where "flower" (think of it pronounced "flo-er") indicates that a river with a shortish name like Dee is part of the answer.

There is something very satisfying about seeing all those words linking up and falling into place, and I admit to spending up to an hour on a puzzle, if I'm determined not to be beaten, but that's a luxury. I normally give myself 15 to 30 minutes, top whack, on the one I do regularly and my personal best is eight minutes (just once).

"Crosswords?" I hear someone out there snort. "Can't see the point."

Still, I should be grateful that Sir, who completes a prize sudoku more often than not, never feels moved to send it in.

Winning would be a horribly expensive experience as the prize is theatre tickets. In London.