You're being short sighted: I find the endeavor of writing a program to solve sudoku much more intellectually interesting and challenging than solving each grid manually.
I never said that writing a program wasn't intellectual. I said that by using a program to solve your Sudoku problem, you would not think anymore. It's like if I win at Chess but I actually don't play, I just ask a program to show me my next moves. The person who created the program used its intellect but not the ones using the program.
