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Hillside mystery:
Giant Sudoku puzzle
Ultimate out-of-home ad on the road to Bristol
By Heidi Dawley
The plains and hills of southwest
England have been home to many a mystery. There’s Stonehenge with its
megalithic boulders, which were dragged, who knows how, from hundreds of
miles away. There is a 180-foot mystical hillside chalk carving of a
well-endowed giant man whose origins are possibly prehistoric, or possibly
not.
Then there are the crop circles that appear periodically,
allegedly created by aliens, or maybe by two old-age pensioners named Doug
and Dave and their fluffy white dog.
And now there is a new riddle. On a hillside just outside of
Hinton in Gloucestershire lies a giant, 275 foot square Sudoku puzzle.
This vexing phenomenon was not created by prehistoric man, nor aliens, nor
even Doug and Dave, but rather marketers keen to promote a satellite TV
show on SkyOne.
“Sudoku is a phenomenon that many have heard of but may not know
much about, so it lent itself to a semi-mystical image appearing up on a
hill like the giant chalk carvings,” says Adrian Lee, director of
publicity for SkyOne. “An enormous thing appearing overnight on a
hillside played well with the Sudoku phenomenon, which came out of nowhere
in the UK.”
Sudoku, which has gained huge popularity in Britain since
being introduced late in 2004, is a numbers game found in newspapers.
SkyOne, which wanted to promote a one-off show called "Vorderman’s
Sudoku Live," convinced a farmer to remove his herd of cows from the
field for one week so that it could be home instead to a giant white
puzzle.
The field used for the giant advertisement is just off the busy M4
motorway, which runs from Bristol to London. The Sudoku grid can be seen
for three miles. About a million cars are expected to pass the puzzle,
which will be up for about a week.
In a stroke of what was considered to be good luck on this
occasion, there was construction going on, slowing traffic in the vicinity
of the hillside ad.
“It has been incredibly cost effective,” says Lee, who said the
whole thing cost a drop in the ocean compared to buying regular
advertising space.
What’s more, he says, it will now be entered into the
Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest Sudoku puzzle.
The brainteaser, which was made out of a biodegradable
material, will only last for one week. People who solve the puzzle, which
incidentally is not a true Sudoku because it has more than one solution,
can enter a competition to win about $9,000.
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July 5, 2005
©
2005
Media Life
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Heidi Dawley, an American living in
London, covers European media for Media Life.
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