A puzzled jury is excused after 66 days

An Australian trial had gone normally for 65 days, with the jurors attentively taking notes, until someone in the courtroom observed them writing vertically as well as horizontally.  As the Associated Press reports, it turned out that several of the jurors were filling the box in two senses: they were solving sudoku puzzles.  On the 66th day the judge reluctantly stopped the trial and excused the jurors from further service.  The trial will start over in a few weeks with a new jury.  The lawyers have likely learned that they need to be more engaging to hold the attention of the jury, and the jurors are probably a lot better at number puzzles than they used to be.