23 Platripedia—Game Tips
History of Sudoku
Many people believe Sudoku originated in Japan, and while the name is Japanese, the creation and evolution of the popular numbers game is actually a fusion from different cultures and histories.
The earliest versions of Sudoku can be traced back to Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler, in the 18th century. Euler developed “Latin Squares” where numbers in a grid appear only once, up and down. Another possible source of Sudoku’s origin may come from 19th century French newspapers. Le Siècle published a grid-based “magic numbers” game that was gradually refined in the pages of rival newspaper, La France.
But while these early versions had some of the characteristics we associate with Sudoku, the first version of the game we recognize did not appear until the 1970s in America. The game was developed by a retired architect named Howard Garnes and was originally called “Number Place.” Number Place appeared in the pages of Dell Magazines, Dell Pencil Puzzles and World Games.
Yet, Sudoku didn’t achieve much popularity until it crossed the ocean to Japan. The president of Nikoli, Maki Kaji, decided to promote the game in the paper Monthly Nikolist. Kaji first created the name “Sudoku.” In Japanese, “Su” means number, and “Doku” means refers to each place on the grid. Sudoku is also short for "Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru", which translates to something like “the numbers must occur only once”—a faithful description of the game.
Sudoku’s next stop came in The Times newspaper in London nearly two decades later thanks to the efforts of Wayne Gould. Wayne developed a computer program to create Sudoku puzzles which allowed puzzles to be output more rapidly to feed the growing fan-base and strengthen its popularity. But even with the rapid calculations of computer software, it still takes several hours for one puzzle to be generated. The game spread like wildfire and soon many British publications were printing daily Sudoku puzzles.
It wouldn’t take long before the popularity of Sudoku would find its way across the pond back to America. In 2005, most major publications were carrying Sudoku puzzles, including the New York Post and USA Today. Since then, Sudoku has been a staple in newspapers and has also been sold as puzzle books and computer games.
Sudoku is an amalgamation of different cultural influences and, at the same time, eventually transcended all cultures to become a worldwide phenomenon. Today, Sudoku is played around the world by players from all walks of life.