The history of Sudoku is a fascinating subject for those who are into the game. You might imagine, based on its name, that Sudoku originated in Japan, but it actually appeared first in the United States and the United Kingdom. Sudoku was first published in the late 1970s in North America in New York by the publisher “Dell Magazines”. Dell, a specialist in puzzles of logic and skill, published Sudoku as “Place Number” in its Math Puzzles and Logic Problems magazine.
The American version of Sudoku
Who designed the modern American version of Sudoku is absolutely undetermined, but some believe it was Walter Mackey, one of the puzzle creators at Dell. Others believe it was Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and independent puzzle builder from Indiana. The reasoning for believing that he was Garns was because he was always on the list of contributors in Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games issues that included “Number Place”, but his name was always missing from issues that did not.
Sudoku comes to Japan
Sudoku finally made its way to Japan when the Japanese found a “Place Number” in a Dell magazine and translated it as something quite different: su means number and doku means single unit. Nikoli introduced it to Japan in 1984. The puzzle appeared in the monthly Nikolist in April as “Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru”. This can be translated as “numbers must be there only in one instance”. It immediately became popular in Japan, which is only natural, considering that Crosswords don’t work very well in the Japanese language, so number puzzles are much more prevalent than word puzzles.
In 1986, the popularity of the puzzle increased and Nikoli introduced two different versions of Sudoku. It is now published in many major Japanese periodicals, including the Asahi Shimbun. Nikoli still has the Sudoku trade name, while other publications in Japan use other names.
Sudoku and the computer
It wasn’t long before the computer could play Sudoku. “DigitHunt” was created for the Commodore 64 in 1984 by a company called Loadstar/Softdisk Publishing. This home computer version of Sudoku allowed people of all ages to enjoy the game conveniently and on demand, right on their computer screens.
Sudoku Modern Fashion
Sudoku continued to grow in popularity and reached fad status in Japan in 2004 and the fad spread to the United States and the United Kingdom through the pages of national newspapers. With this growing popularity came more analysis and deeper scrutiny of Sudoku. It was an accepted belief that, in practical terms, there are virtually infinite solution grids for the 9×9 Sudoku puzzle. In 2005, Bertram Felgenhauer put the number at about 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960. He arrived at this number using logical calculations. Frazer Jarvis and Ed Russell further simplified the analysis of the number of solution grids. How many solution grids there are for the 16 x 16 Sudoku has not yet been calculated.
Sudoku is now published in a variety of places, including the New York Post and USA Today. The puzzle is also reprinted by Kappa in GAMES magazine. The Daily Telegraph uses the name “Sudoku” and you may see the puzzle called “su doku” elsewhere. You will often find Sudoku included in puzzle anthologies including The Giant 1001 Puzzle Book. In these books, Sudoku is usually titled something like “Nine Numbers”. Its popularity is such that “Sudoku” is now a household word around the world and is part of millions of Google searches every month. You can read more about Sudoku at http://Sudoku.HintsAndSecrets.com.
