Airport Gift Shops Feel the Sudoku Effect
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 07.27.06 | 12:27 PM ET
In the course of reporting a story about hot sellers at various airport gift shops, Harriet Baskas came across a bit of a mystery. She writes in her On the Road column for USA Today: “[T]he folks at the Hudson Group, which operates news and gift shops at airports nationwide, noticed that an unusual item was being increasingly re-ordered by newsstands. The Hudson Group’s Laura Samuels says, ‘We had plenty of pencils in storage, but noticed that the general managers kept re-ordering mechanical pencils. On closer study we realized this was a byproduct of the Sudoku craze.’ Travelers working on these extremely popular grid-based puzzles need sharp pencils and good erasers. Pencil sharpeners aren’t a common airport amenity, so savvy Sudoku players have transformed an old-fashioned writing implement into an airport bestseller.”
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
