The following is an excerpt from “The Appeal of Sudoku”, by Marcel Danesi, Ph.D, posted June 19, 2009, author of “The Puzzle Instinct”)
Despite its Japanese name, the concept behind Sudoku crystallized in the United States in the form of a puzzle called “Numbers in Place”, which appeared for the first time in the May 1979 issue of Dell Puzzles and Crossword Games magazine. It went virtually unnoticed, except by readers of the magazine. By the way, the late architect Howards Garns is pegged as being its inventor.
In 1984, an editor for Nikoli magazines in Japan came across one of the puzzles, changed its name to Sudoku (meaning “only single numbers allowed”) and included it in his magazines. Within a year, major Japanese dailies were carrying the increasingly popular puzzle.
In 1997, a retired judge from New Zealand, named Wayne Gould, saw a Sudoku puzzle and started making his own. These appeared in 2004 in the Conway Daily Sun of New Hampshire. A few months later Sudoku puzzles started appearing in The Times of London. By early 2005 Sudoku became a craze in Britain, quickly spreading throughout the globe from there, joining crosswords as a permanent feature of puzzle pages in newspapers.
For the sake of historical accuracy, it should be mentioned that number placement puzzles started appearing in newspapers in the latter part of the 19th century in Europe, and especially in France. These were not really Sudoku yet, since they could be solved in more than one way. But they had a similar layout. And of course, there are magic squares, which go back to ancient times in China.
Magic squares are number placement puzzles, but are solved by considering the actual value of a number since, in a magic square, the rows, columns and diagonals must all add up to the same total (known as the magic constant). The idea of Sudoku can probably be traced back to magic squares or “Latin Squares” invented by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783). A Latin square is a square arrangement of digits placed in such a way that no digit appears twice in the same row or column. Sudoku seems to expand upon Euler’s invention.
In 2005 Janice from Team Solve devised her own unique process of constructing Sudoku puzzles. Her comprehensive method includes use of various grid patterns and strategic inter-changing of rows and columns (the rest is a corporate secret!). She continues to construct all of Team Solve’s puzzle content. As she explains it, “I took my puzzle solving habit to the next level.”
50% Complete
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.