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Play the new Koo Stark numbers game on your mobile phone!

Your Sniffer rather wonders what USA Today is going to make of that uclick Press Release. Having shown - pretty clearly - that they know how to spell Sudoku - illustrating this phonetically with "sue-DOE-koo" -uclick has not just once, but twice, spelled it as Sod You, Ko!

A mystery! Who is Koo? what is Ko?

It isn't an intentional anti-royalty dig, despite the former fame of Koo Stark - the actress and skin-exposer who once aspired to marry one of Queen Elizabeth's sons (Andrew). It's nonetheless going to irritate brand managers at USA Today.

The game is correctly described in the official press release as "Sudoku (sue-DOE-koo), a popular number puzzle" and gets spelled equally correctly later on, in the remark: "From small coffee shops in the U.K. to homes across the U.S., Sudoku has turned everyday puzzle players into Sudoku fanatics."

And then, without warning, the letters 'o' and 'u' get transposed: "The USA TODAY Soduku puzzle currently appears in the USA TODAY newspaper and on USATODAY.com. More than 6 million readers see the USA TODAY Soduko puzzle each day," the release warbles.

Just to make sure we don't think this is a one-off (or even a two-off) we then have Jeff Weber quoted, gushing how this is "an exciting opportunity for us to bring Soduko to mobile phone users."

None of which answers the unasked question: why would anybody want to pick one brand of sod you koo, over another? It's just a puzzle... and it's not like crossword puzzles, where you need to understand the mind of the composer. Go buy a sod you ko book! - at least that won't run your phone battery down...

Technorati: Koo Stark, sudoku, USA Today