LingDoku III—Too Much, Too Late

Trey Jones
l’École de SpecGram, Washington D.C.

For your puzzling pleasure, we’re introducing the LingDoku III puzzle form after several more years of hibernation. LingDoku, in general, is a shameless attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Japanese number/logic game SuDoku by concocting a SuDoku-like activity suitable for Linguists and introducing a thin veneer of linguistics to create an artificial barrier to participation for non-linguists.

While interest in SuDoku has not completely disappeared, the mania of years gone by has certainly faded. And this puzzle is both harder (by virtue of its size) and more confusing (by virtue of all those similar-looking, less familiar symbols). Nonetheless, we must assume that the SpecGram Trendmonger Elves™ know what they are doing.

• The puzzle uses 16 fricatival symbols: ɸ, β, f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʂ, ʐ, ç, ʝ, x, and ɣ.
• Each symbol can only occur once per row, per column, and per 4×4 sub-block in the grid below.

As before, those of you who find this puzzle “too difficult” should make a point of shying away from any serious work in phonology and syntax may have a point. If you find it “too tedious” or “not worth the effort”—yeah, a lot of people feel that way about phonology and syntax, too. Those of you who found it solvable should email your solutions to SpecGram by March 1st, 2025.

The solution (all the usual disclaimers of quality apply) and the names of the solvers (if any) will appear in the next issue of SpecGram.

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