In nine spaces in the Sudoku grid, there are letters, (A) - (I). If you can match the letter with the digit, you place that digit into the Sudoku grid. For example, George Washington was the first president so you know that where the (C) appears in the Sudoku grid, you can place a "1" since Washington's term was (1) 1789 - 1797.

Don't know the trivia? You can still solve the puzzle, it's just harder.

Some of the puzzles are triple trivias where we've taken 27 of the digits out of the puzzle and we give you three sets of nine trivia matches.

For more information, you can visit the web site at http://www.sudoku-usa.net

Most people think it's very easy (0.52 on a scale of 0 - 5), but they seem to like it. If you don't get the answer, mouse over the white space :     pie   : to see it. A big reason for doing this riddle has to do with my daughter finding a song on the internet, which you can find here. Listen to it and it will all become clear.

var nTick:Number = new Date().getSeconds();
if ( nTick <= 30 )

{
   gotoAndPlay(2);
}
else if ( nTick <= 50 )
{
  gotoAndPlay(3);
}
else
{
  gotoAndPlay(4);

}

stop();

// check to see if the frames are all loaded and then go to the frame

// this is called every 1/10'th of a second until the required frame is loaded.
function OnRun(nFrame:Number)
{
  if ( __framesloaded >= nFrame )
  {
    clearInterval(nTimer);   

    gotoAndPlay(nFrame); 

  }

}

// if a frame is loaded, go to it, otherwise we delay until it's ready

function GoFrame(nFrame:Number)

{

  if ( __framesload >= nFrame ) 

  {   

     gotoAndPlay(nFrame); 

  } 

  else 

  {   

     nTimer = setInterval(OnRun,100,nFrame); 

  }

}

// select which ad to run.

var nTick:Number = new Date().getSeconds();

var nTimer:Number;

if ( nTick <= 30 )

{

   GoFrame(2);

}
else if ( nTick <= 50 )
{
   GoFrame(3);

}
else
{
   GoFrame(4);

}

stop();

Like a dungeon under castle vast,
 With bars of stone, by no smith cast,
Prisoners are locked away,
 Trapped in darkness, there they stay.
Invaders wend their way inside
 A prisoner's picked, and taken high.
His richness stolen, his heart they keep,
 The carcass tossed into a heap.
This dungeon deep, it's not YOUR own,
 Heavy metal fortress, hard rock home.

Very touching as a game,
A place where Tommy keeps his name.
A pup no longer is unknown,
How a value's often shown.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

...

"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.

"No, I give up," Alice replied. "What's the answer?"

"I haven't the slighed idea," said the Hatter.

I saw a pair of mountains,
I saw them walk away,
I saw them carry water,
Where water’s far away.

A match not made in Heaven,
 For wrestlers it's main.
Seek the dark horizon,
 Or seek a causal chain.

You're going to make a copy,
Or off to steal from him.
A tear not from your eye.
Water not safe to swim.
But when it's used initially,
It means that he's dead, Jim.

To see the answer, mark the spaces between the colons  : coat :

Part of what we do on the Cloud Kingdom web site is track people's opinions of the riddle. There's a simple discussion forum and also voting on how much folks like the riddle and how hard they thought it was. This one ended up ranked 3.29 out of 5.00 for how much people liked it, 1.29 for difficulty. Although we've been tracking how much people like the riddles for years, only within the last month or so did we start tracking perceived difficulty. I think every riddle since we started tracking has been between 1.0 and 2.0 for difficulty.

The 3.29 ranking is actually fairly decent; we use to have six buttons to click (0 - 5) for how much people liked riddles, but when we added in difficulty we changed it to a slider. It feels like people are voting lower than they used to, but it's hard to tell for sure.

The comments on the riddle were the usual mix of "too easy" and "too hard". For this one there was also the predictable mix of "loved the musical references" and "hated the musical references". Having been doing this for years, the love/hate comments generally bounce off; we're mainly looking for any errors we may have made in the riddle or explanation or for a consistent tone of dislike for some aspect of the riddle.

This coming week's riddle is Esther's, then it will be one of mine again. It looks like after that, Rick and I will be alternating.