![]() The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Maki Kaji ( 鍜治 真起, Kaji Maki ), president of the Nikoli puzzle company, 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 digits must be single", or as "the digits are limited to one occurrence" (In Japanese, dokushin means an "unmarried person"). Whether or not Garns was familiar with any of the French newspapers listed above is unclear. He died in 1989 before getting a chance to see his creation as a worldwide phenomenon. Garns' 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. The modern Sudoku was most likely designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor from Connersville, Indiana, and first published in 1979 by Dell Magazines as Number Place (the earliest known examples of modern Sudoku). These weekly puzzles were a feature of French newspapers such as L'Écho de Paris for about a decade, but disappeared about the time of World War I. Although they were unmarked, each 3×3 subsquare did indeed comprise the numbers 1–9, and the additional constraint on the broken diagonals led to only one solution. It simplified the 9×9 magic square puzzle so that each row, column, and broken diagonals contained only the numbers 1–9, but did not mark the subsquares. On July 6, 1895, Le Siècle 's rival, La France, refined the puzzle so that it was almost a modern Sudoku and named it carré magique diabolique ('diabolical magic square'). 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 subsquare added up to the same number. Le Siècle, a Paris daily, published a partially completed 9×9 magic square with 3×3 subsquares on November 19, 1892. Number puzzles appeared in newspapers in the late 19th century, when French puzzle setters began experimenting with removing numbers from magic squares. newspaper, and then The Times (London), in 2004, thanks to the efforts of Wayne Gould, who devised a computer program to rapidly produce unique puzzles.įrom La France newspaper, July 6, 1895: The puzzle instructions read, "Use the numbers 1 to 9 nine times each to complete the grid in such a way that the horizontal, vertical, and two main diagonal lines all add up to the same total." Predecessors However, the modern Sudoku only began to gain widespread popularity in 1986 when it was published by the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli under the name Sudoku, meaning "single number". The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution.įrench newspapers featured variations of the Sudoku puzzles in the 19th century, and the puzzle has appeared since 1979 in puzzle books under the name Number Place. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 × 3 subgrids that compose the grid (also called "boxes", "blocks", or "regions") contain all of the digits from 1 to 9. Anything that stretches your mind will help keep your brain sharp.Sudoku ( / s uː ˈ d oʊ k uː, - ˈ d ɒ k-, s ə-/ Japanese: 数独, romanized: sūdoku, lit.'digit-single' originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. I have a hand-held Sudoku game (with stylus) that I play all the time.Įven though I practice, I'm not very good. ![]() Sudoku really is an excellent brain game, as it trains logical reasoning and visual perception, among other brain skills. The challenge of sudoku is using the process of elimination and other strategies to identify the unique solution for the sudoku puzzle. The numbers 1 through 9 must appear exactly once in each 3x3 box. The numbers 1 through 9 must appear exactly once in each column. The numbers 1 through 9 must appear exactly once in each row. To figure out which number between 1 and 9 belongs in a particular cell, you need to adhere to the following rules: Your job is to determine the correct number to be entered in each of the empty cells. Some of the cells in the grid are prefilled with a number between 1 and 9, while many other cells are blank. This grid is subdivided into nine 3 x 3 boxes. ![]() The hard part lies in solving the puzzle!Ī sudoku puzzle consists of a 9 by 9 grid. Here's a summary of the rules of sudoku, in case you've never played before or need a refresher. Printable Sudoku Puzzles - Rules of Sudoku The solutions pages are provided as well. To print a puzzle page, click the "Print This Page" button at the top of the page.
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