TOFINO, BC – A local Sudoku player is recovering from a white-knuckle brush with the edge after a simple mistake sent him on a terrifying backtracking adventure to salvage almost 14 minutes worth of work.

Dennis Calvert was relaxing in his bath with a pen and a copy of the Tofino-Ucluelet Westerly News on Tuesday when he absentmindedly placed two 7s in the same Sudoku column, not realizing his mistake until he made several more moves based on the erroneous number placement.

“I had just finished most of the crossword puzzle, and was about to try two of the five Jumble clues, when I decided to dive into a Sudoku instead,” Calvert said at a press conference yesterday, choking back tears as his trembling fingers stroked a rosary. “I guess I was feeling smug about getting all of the 2s right away, and got overconfident. It almost cost me everything.”

After discovering his dangerous lapse in judgement, Calvert, a barista and part-time surf instructor, frantically checked every column, row, and square trying to remember the order of completion, until he located and destroyed the pernicious impostor 7.

“It was touch-and-go there for a while,” he said to the assembled media after a deep breath, still shaken by how close he’d come to the brink. “It’s things like this that make you truly appreciate being alive.”

“This sort of thing changes a man,” he added with a strained sigh. “I don’t know what’s left for me now. If you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss looks back at you and says, ‘Hey. Put a seven over there.’”