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You’ll never find a sudoku puzzle in this magazine. Some say global warming will bring about the world’s decline. Others point to nuclear disaster or same-sex marriage. I have reason to believe that the sudoku sensation will be to blame.

I was settling in for a long flight in late February and, to kill some time, reached for the airline’s magazine in the seat pocket. I flipped through the pages and when I came to the sudoku puzzle I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about. An hour or so later, I had correctly filled in the last square and felt a surge of satisfaction. I was immediately hooked and couldn’t wait to try another one, perhaps even a tougher one.

I savored knowing that, on my return flight, the new month would have rolled in and the airline would have inserted the new issue of its in-flight magazine into the seat pockets. I anticipated how the flight home would be lost in the labyrinth of the sudoku. I wouldn’t even notice turbulence or the stale air or that I had the middle seat. But when I buckled up and pulled out the magazine, not only was it the old issue, but someone had already worked out the sudoku. I suddenly felt that I was wearing a noose that needed adjusting. I snapped at my husband about the armrest being mine. And I irritably reclined my seat back into the knees of the passenger behind me.

The episode eventually passed and all was well for the rest of the flight. But back at home I developed the habit of unwinding at the end of the day with the daily paper’s sudoku. Some days, I would neglect to feed the cats until I had finished the puzzle. I wouldn’t even hear their mews or feel their claws.

“So, how are your gardens?” my hair stylist asked me in late spring.

“Not so good,” I said. Catching her eye in the mirror, I tried to explain: “Have you ever played sudoku?”

Then someone gave me Sudoku for Dummies—240 puzzles, from easy to diabolic—and I began working two or three a day, and then four or five a day. But it wasn’t just me who was addicted. On benches around campus or in alleys outside area lunch spots, I noticed abandoned newspapers, their pages folded back to reveal a worked over sudoku.

I tried to justify my habit when questioned. It requires me to use a part of my brain I don’t usually tap, I’d reply. One evening, however, it was bedtime but I was deep into a puzzle. The news was on the television and I looked up when I heard the newscaster describe a horrible human tragedy, multiple car bombs and dozens dead. But with a blink I went back to my pencil and paper; I had to figure out whether the 3 or the 7—or the 9 or the 2—would unlock this particular sudoku.

Fortunately, I was lucid enough to catch the appalling irony of what I had just thought and done. I was losing my humanity to a pointless puzzle that had almost infinite variations. Sudoku wasn’t helping me to think, I realized, it was numbing my mind. Was this the effect it was having on hundreds of thousands of other sudoku-crazed people? I tossed the paper into the recycling bin.

I still play the occasional sudoku. But between distraction and contemplation, I choose the latter. So, you won’t find sudoku in these pages, but I hope that you always find plenty to contemplate.