Thinkers’ Park

We all know about SudoKu. But many believe that from the name it has its origin in Japan, which is false. Read on.

What is Sudoku?

Sudoku is a logic-based number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9 only one time each. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid. The name Sudoku is short for “Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru“, meaning “the numbers must be single”, or “the numbers must occur only once”.

First popular thing close to Sudoku

Number puzzles first appeared in newspapers in the late 19th century, when French puzzle setters began experimenting with removing numbers from magic squares. Le Siècle, a Paris-based daily, published a partially completed 9×9 magic square with 3×3 sub-squares in 1892.It was not a Sudoku because it contained double-digit numbers and required arithmetic rather than logic to solve, but it shared key characteristics: each row, column and sub-square added up to the same number.

Within three years Le Siècle’s rival, La France, refined the puzzle so that it was almost a modern Sudoku. It simplified the 9×9 magic square puzzle so that each row and column contained only the numbers 1-9, but did not mark the sub-squares. Although they are unmarked, each 3×3 sub-square does indeed comprise the numbers 1-9. However, the puzzle cannot be considered the first Sudoku because, under modern rules, it has two solutions. The puzzle setter ensured a unique solution by requiring 1-9 to appear in both diagonals.These weekly puzzles were a feature of newspaper titles including L’Echo de Paris for about a decade but disappeared about the time of the First World War.

The modern Sudoku

The modern Sudoku was most likely designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor from Indiana, and first published in 1979 by Dell Magazines as Number Place (the earliest known examples of modern Sudoku). Garns’s name was always present on the list of contributors in issues of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games that included Number Place, and was always absent from issues that did not. He died in 1989 before getting a chance to see his creation as a worldwide phenomenon

The name Sudoku

The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984 as Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru which can be translated as “the digits must be single” or “the digits are limited to one occurrence.” At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku by Maki Kaji. The name has since become a trademark of puzzle publisher Nikoli Co. Ltd. in Japan.

Mohan Rao.

The knife does not cut itself, the finger does not touch itself, the mind does not know itself, the eye does not see itself.
- Zen Proverb