Back in July, I won a sudoku costume made by Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed. The eBay auction page is here.

 

I drove from Berkeley to Sacramento to pick up the costume from Rob. Here’s a family picture. From left to right: me, Rob’s brother Mike, Rob, his daughter June, and his wife Stacy. Mike pointed out that we were wearing primary colors.

 

 

 

Naturally, Rob was really excited to get paid! And I was just as excited to fold my brand new costume in half to stuff it into the back of my car. Being the handy craftsman that he is, Rob suggested supporting the board with a couple of yardsticks to prevent it from folding over. Superb idea.

 

 

The costume sat in my living room for the next 3 months, provoking questions every now and then from our houseguests.

 

Here I am trying on the costume just before we drove out to San Francisco for the huge party in the Castro. I didn’t remember until it was too late that I wanted to color the pencil yellow and add a pink eraser to it.

 

Overall, it was an enormous success! I’ve never had so much attention from so many people in my life…maybe this is what it feels like to be a celebrity. I must have had my picture taken at least 300 times. I posed with a lot of other people for pictures, but my favorite (and the crowd favorite) must have been with a girl who was wearing a Rubik’s cube costume. Two puzzle costumes in one picture! I wish I could have gotten a copy of it, but I didn’t even bother trying to bring my camera because my hands were virtually useless behind the giant board.

 

 

 

Tons of people recognized my costume as a sudoku puzzle, and most of the time they yelled it out or pointed it out to a friend. I’ve never heard the word sudoku spoken so many times in one night! But I also heard some people shouting out some wrong guesses. Here are the ones I heard, in order of popularity:

1.      Bingo

2.      Calendar

3.      Table of prime numbers

 

 

I got a lot of great comments on the costume, including:

·        “This must be a 4-star one. It’s really hard.”

·        “Are you 4 stars or 5 stars?”

·        “I’ve already got you figured out! I win!”

·        “What do we get if we solve it? Is there a prize?”

·        “Oh my god I love that game! That’s my favorite game!......What’s it called?”

·        “I hate math!”

·        “Is it even possible to solve?”

 

 

If you’ve read Rob’s page describing the construction of the costume, you’ll know that it actually is possible to solve. I figured a great way to make the costume even better would be to make it interactive. So in addition to the oversized novelty pencil you can see in the previous picture, I brought along a black Sharpie so people could fill in the boxes throughout the night. At one point, two guys spent a solid 5 minutes trying to solve me, debating their solution with each other the whole time. As you can see, most of the numbers that people filled in turned out to be wrong, and by the end of the night, things degraded into people using me as a walking graffiti wall.

 

On our way out of the Castro, one guy I met at a crosswalk actually recognized my costume from Cockeyed.com! He asked if I was a Cockeyed fan also, and I replied, “Of course I am!”

 

 

A few people blew me kisses or kissed their hand and then touched my face with it. One guy (who was obviously drunk) leaned in for the real thing, and afterwards I heard a nearby girl say to her friend, “Did you see him kiss the sudoku guy? He was terrified. You could see the fear in his eyes!”

 

 

I was also groped several times, mostly on the butt and crotch areas. Someone even stuck their hand in my pocket at one point. I was afraid he was going to steal my wallet, but then I realized he was just trying to put a dollar bill into my pocket!

 

I got several compliments on the costume’s creativity and originality, and it made me feel bad because I didn’t have time to explain to most people that I hadn’t made the costume, but bought it. But this inspires me to design and build my own costume next year that will get just as much attention as this one.

 

Thanks, Rob, for the awesome costume!!!