History of Sudoku

Roots and Development of Sudoku

Sudoku is said to have 18 – century roots, but the trace is non conclusive. One of the theories believed the puzzle was linked to Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, who first examined the Latin square, which in turn also has its root linked on an ancient Chinese puzzle, Lo Shu. Though the theory has not proved the invention has anything to do with Euler, it adds colours to the myth of Sudoku roots and development.

The link of Sudoku to Japan was traced to Japanese publisher Nikoli, who claims it brought the puzzle to Japan from the United States, which was then simply called Number Place.

The first puzzle was created by Howard Garnes, a freelance puzzle constructor, in 1979, and was first published in New York by the specialist puzzle publisher Dell Magazines in its magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games, under the title Number Place.

The puzzle was subsequently introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984 as "Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru ( 数字は独身に限る )", which can be translated as "the numbers must be single" or "the numbers must occur only once" ( 独身 literally means "single; celibate; unmarried"). The puzzle was named by Kaji Maki ( 鍜治真起 ) - the president of Nikoli. At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku ( 数独 , pronounced sue-do-koo; sū = number, doku = single); it is a common practice in Japanese to take only the first kanji of compound words to form a shorter version. In 1986, Nikoli made some changes to the Sudoku rules and introduced two innovations to the Sudoku Puzzle and gain popularity rapidly in Japan. The number of givens was restricted to no more than 30 and puzzles became "symmetrical" (meaning the givens were distributed in rotationally symmetric cells). It is now published in mainstream Japanese periodicals, such as the Asahi Shimbun. Within Japan, Nikoli still holds the trademark for the name Sudoku; other publications in Japan use alternative names.

In 1989, Loadstar/Softdisk Publishing published DigitHunt on the Commodore 64, which was apparently the first home computer version of Sudoku. At least one publisher still uses that title.

Professor Yoshimitsu Kanai published his computerized version of Sudoku Puzzle generator under the name "Single Number" (the English translation of Sudoku) for the Apple Macintosh in 1995 in Japanese and English, and for the Palm (PDA) in 1996.

Kappa reprints Nikoli Sudoku in GAMES Magazine under the name Squared Away; the New York Post, USA Today, and San Francisco Chronicle now also publish the Sudoku Puzzle. It is also often included in puzzle anthologies, such as The Giant 1001 Puzzle Book (under the title Nine Numbers).

Bringing the process full-circle, Dell Magazines, which originally published the "Number Place" puzzle in United States, now publishes two Sudoku magazines: Original Sudoku and Extreme Sudoku.

A significant milestone for the development of Sudoku Puzzle traced to Wayne Gould, a New Zealander and a retired Hong Kong judge. In 1997, Gould was enticed by seeing a partly completed puzzle in a Japanese bookshop. He went on to develop a computer program that spontaneously produces Sudoku Puzzles;
which took him over six years to complete, now marketed by Pappocom – Gould’s software house. Knowing that British newspapers have a long history of publishing crosswords and other puzzles, he promoted Sudoku Puzzle to The Times in Britain , which launched it on 12 November 2004 . The Sudoku Puzzles by Gould’s Pappocom have been printed daily in the Times ever since.

It was in the year 2005 Sudoku Puzzle gains its International fame and popularity through the front page treatment by UK newspaper - The Daily Telegraph. Since then, it was rapidly introduced by several other national British newspapers including The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Sun (where it was labeled Sun Doku), The Daily Mirror; and subsequently other international papers.

The immense surge in popularity of Sudoku in British newspapers and internationally has led to it being dubbed in the world media in 2005 variously as "the Rubik's cube of the 21st century" or the "fastest growing puzzle in the world".

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