Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku takes your café-laden mornings and breathes the missing breath of sophistication into them by fitting enough puzzles into a UMD disc that you’ll never need to read a newspaper gain. Not to say that reading is a bad habit; otherwise this review would be moot and those poor, helpless crossword puzzles would just die. Those familiar with the game already understand the mechanics, but to outsiders it’s a complicated mathematics puzzle. Taking place on a nine-by-nine square grid, the object is to fit the numbers one through nine into all 81 squares without repeating a digit within a full line or grid of three-by-three. This is basically Sudoku, and it can be arranged in millions of ways which can be gauged by how smart they make the player feel (this is commonly known as a difficulty level) –either really smart or really thick.

There you have it, that’s the game. Solve the puzzles so that everything fits mathematically and you’ve got yourself a grid full of logical thinking. Now onto the video game at hand. Everything starts off with a nice clean introduction by Carol Vorderman herself, British by nature. Apparently, she’s a celebrity in the UK, having hosted a well-known show by the name of “Countdown”, which tested the intelligence of the contestants. She sure doesn’t mind feeling smart, that one. You’ll be introduced to the history and working of Sudoku, along with the path of its recent craze before you even get your hands on the first puzzle. The introductory video is a good analogy for the game –a very smart and solid setting for something that won’t give more than what you ask for.

Aside from the 30 minutes of tutorials from the cleavage-heavy Vorderman, there is an actual Sudoku game to play. The massive single-player offers four categories of play: Classic, Arcade, Career, and Challenge Mode. Classic mode dumps you into a Sudoku puzzle just like you’d want –with four levels of difficulty to choose from. Outside of the tutorials, beginners can turn on assists to aid them in their mathematical puzzle-solving. Options such as auto-highlighting you active mini-grid (3X3) or notifying the player of an error are helpful, but more experienced or daring Sudoku masters will promptly disable them.

The game and its video footage are actually a very nice combination. Containing an overall solid feel and nearly infinite (1,000,000? Am I reading that right?) amount of puzzles, the amount of Sudoku here can be tackled until the average whiz-kid needs a break and feels like watching a pretty lady walk around and tell you what-for –then go back to the main game again. The Arcade mode essentially offers as arcade of a Sudoku game as one could expect. Modes include playing against the standard clock, another version where each correct move grants the player more time, Perfection, and Three Strikes. Perfection scores against mistakes and Three Strikes limits the player to only three mistakes until the round ends.

Career mode introduces you to a ranking system of belts, from White to the highly-regarded Black Belt. The difficulty of each puzzle will increase until the player receives the Black Belt, furthermore inflating the mental ego of this newly dubbed master. And what if you think Vorderman isn’t as smart as her game says she is? The game’s Challenge Carol mode puts you up against her in a puzzle face-off where the player must complete all of the Dan challenges in order to gain the rank of 4th Dan. Completing the 4th Dan is the only way to be considered a Sudoku master, and then you can truly feel better than a UK celebrity.

While most of the game exists in single-player, the multiplayer offers enough to really quench the thirst of Sudoku heads with a PSP. For a game that goes no further than a hostess and a boatload of Sudoku puzzles and challenges, it surely stands the test of giving what it offers –lots of Sudoku in a solid and clean fashion. The interface and music are clean, simple, and barebones all at the same time. Vorderman comes out in nice video with good tips and information on the game, but the tutorials offer no interaction. In every place CVS is not a Sudoku game, it does not give any more than it has to, but that’s more than enough for $20. If you’ve got a PSP and love Sudoku (or women, but hopefully Sudoku), welcome to your heart’s content.