So that’s the Guardian Sudoku and the Independent‘s Quick, Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced and Prize Sudokus completed before I arrived at work this morning – two of them in less than my seven minutes from yesterday.

It is very tempting to enter the Indie‘s Sudoku Championship.

Father’s Day tugs at the heartstrings from the word go. It builds up the story of Rose’s dead father, pushing all the psychological buttons for you to come out the other end welling up. And hurrah for that.

Doctor Who can do anything, which makes me wary of accusations that an episode "isn’t Doctor Who." Writer Paul Cornell pushes the envelope here, telling a very different short story using the Who universe. And yet the requirements of the plot mean that only a few TV shows – and perhaps only Doctor Who – could tell this story. Time travel is a key element, clearly, but the nature of the show is that we blithely accept much of the time travel related setup. We suspend our disbelief because the central core of the story – of Rose coming to terms with her father’s life and Pete Tyler sacrificing himself for the world – rings true. Even some of the more random additions – the first telephone call and the Streets track on the radio, and even the odd bit with the TARDIS in the church – don’t detract from the episode.

The cast are terrific. Eccleston is at his best and Billie Piper’s reactions are utterly believable. For the first time, I enjoyed Camille Coduri’s performance, and Shaun Dingwall set a gold standard for Doctor Who guest stars. Joe Ahearne, who also directed Dalek, showed himself again to be the series’ most effective director so far.

There were some great moments: the Doctor finding the TARDIS reduced to a police box; Mickey swinging in the playground as everyone else disappears. The red monster point-of-view shots were reminiscent of “Classic Who” while the appearing/disappearing car reminded me a bit of Back to the Future, as did the scene where Pete asks Rose about his future (although it also reminded me of the Star Trek: TNG episode Yesterday’s Enterprise).

As with any story, there were little niggles. The Reapers can eat people but are too weak to smash a stained glass window. Can’t they just materialise in the church? Using with the TARDIS key to cause a really slow reconstruction of the TARDIS jarred (and the TARDIS then disappears again so it was also redundant plotwise).

There could only be one resolution to the plot, but that’s not a criticism. We are told at the beginning of Romeo & Juliet that it’s not going to end happily but it no more spoils the conclusion than knowing that Pete is going to die at the end of Father’s Day. Touching, dramatic and groundbreaking, Father’s Day may have to fight it out with Dalek – two stories very different but also similar in ways (“both alike in dignity”?) – to win the title of best of the series. But with five more episodes to come, that could all change…

Sudoku has been a craze for a fortnight and already the backlash has begun. And quite rightly too.

The Independent has been printing several puzzles a day. More than one paper is shouting about big prize Sudoku competitions. The Guardian showed its commitmnet by printing one of its “original, hand-crafted” (as if that makes any difference) puzzles on every page of the G2 one day last week. We’re told that the puzzles are elegant, with hidden humour. “And then you realise with joy that there is a 9 in every corner.” Now I was as mathmetically menky as the next top-set geek at school, but oddly enough I still don’t find that particularly amusing.

In the last week, I must have completed nearly a dozen of these Japanese (or American, if you believe the Observer‘s expose) puzzles. The selection of starting numbers can vary the difficulty, but that aside once you’ve done one you’ve done them all. I hope it doesn’t sound immodest to shout that I polished off today’s Guardian Sudoku in around seven minutes this morning. That’s about the same length of time as it takes to tackle the quick crossword.

On Friday night, I sat in a bar in London with two friends working through that day’s Guardian cryptic crossword by Bunthorne, and after a few hours (and a little bit of mobile phone googling) completed it. The puzzle was built of a variety of clues, from anagrams to general knowledge to plays on words. Simon Hoggart chose this same puzzle as a comparison point in Saturday’s Guardian when he derided Sudoku:

When you’ve finished a Sudoku puzzle, you’ve got a box full of numbers. When you finish a good crossword, say by Araucaria, Paul, or Shed, you’ve got something of lasting beauty. Take Bunthorne’s clue yesterday (“can areas of study define a wit?” 1,1,6) that led to WC Fields, and a superb anagram (“I died, RIP: Hell hath no bar open the while, a disaster”), not only appropriate to Fields’s name, but containing his epitaph, “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” Which is why Sudoku will be forgotten by the end of the year.

I’ll carry on doing the Guardian‘s daily Sudoku: it’s on page 2 so I do it on my way past. I may even be tempted to try a prize puzzle. But I’d always rather solve a handful of clues of in Araucaria crossword than successfully fill 81 squares with numbers.

The 50th Eurovision Song Contest is less than two weeks away. There are so many contestant countries that – like last year – there’ll be a semi-final a couple of days before the final. (Who fans note that The Empty Child will be on at 6.25pm6.30pm to make way for Eurovision.)

The Good
Five that aren’t too bad:

• Iceland (dancy)
• Switzerland (rocky, and the band’s called Vanilla Ninja)
• Slovenia (ballady)
• Lithuania (also dancy)
• United Kingdom (Touch My Fire)

Honourable mentions too to F.Y.R. Macedonia, despite some awful dancing, and Spain, despite being pretty much Las Ketchup.

The Bad
Some of these are awful while some are, in true Eurovision spirit, amusingly bad.

• Belgium (really dull ballad)
• Croatia (a dirge called “Wolves Die Alone”)
• Finland (fittingly, the title is “Why?”)
• Ireland (dreadful – two loud children dancing like it’s a school disco)
• Moldova (oh dear, oh dear, oh dear; you’ll have to see this to believe it)
• Norway (stadium rawk)
• Portugal (Renee and Renato for the twenty-first century)
• Ukraine (the ugliest boyband in the world…ever! rap “Lies be the weapon of mass destruction”)

The Rest
There is a sprinkling of interest amongst the other contestants. Latvia have entered a cut-price McFly; Bosnia-Herzogovina’s Atomic Kitten clones will probably do well despite the song being trite nonsense; Denmark’s entry has lousy verses but an OK chorus; Hungary are going for the Ukraine/Riverdance vote with a crowd of dancers; and Serbia & Montenegro are represented by a Balkan Westlife.

Finally, Austria’s entry is like the Buena Vista Social Club withot the Buena Vista. Or the Club. So like the social then. With yodelling.

But don’t take my word for it – you can watch all the entries, read the lyrics and, oh, so much more on the Eurovision website.