History of Sudoku

Although sudoku puzzles have become an international craze since 2005, they actually came into existence long before that. Sudoku puzzles actually have a history that dates back approximately 13 centuries.

As early as the eighth century, Magic Squares appeared in Arabic literature.  A Magic Square had nine rows and nine columns.  The numbers 1 through 9 were arranged in such a way that 5 was in the center and all rows, columns, and both diagonals totaled 15. 

Magic Squares gave rise to Latin squares around the 13^th century. In the 1700’s, Leonard Euhler worked extensively with Latin squares.  A Latin square is a table with the same number of rows as columns.  The number of rows is the number of digits, letters, or symbols that can be placed in the table.  They are inserted in such a way that each digit, letter or symbol appears only once in each column or row.

The Latin square was modified to include rows, columns and blocks.  Like the Latin square, number could only appear once in each row or column, but these puzzles included the number appearing only once in each block.  In 1979, Howard Garns published the modified Latin square under the name “Number Place.” 

In 1984, Japanese publisher Nikoli included the puzzles in the Monthly Nikolist paper.  The Japanese name originally given to the puzzles was a five-word phrase that translated as “the numbers must be single.” The name was later shortened to Sudoku.  In 1986, Nikoli changed the puzzles so that creating them required they had no more than 32 givens, and the givens were distributed in symmetrical squares.  The Nikoli sudoku puzzles are still created by hand, not computer generated.  Today, there are over 600,000 copies of sudoku magazines published solely in Japan every month.

In 1997, Wayne Gould began work on a computer program that would generate sudoku puzzles.  He promoted his finished product to the The Times, a British newspaper, in 2004.  The Times published their first puzzle under the name Su Doku in November of that year.   A year later, The Times began publishing hard and easy puzzles side-by-side.

Sudoku has even extended to the world of game show television.  Sudoku Live was first broadcast in 2005 by Sky One.  The game featured nine teams of nine players, one of which was a celebrity, using handheld devices to solve sudoku puzzles.  In 2005, the BBC began airing Sudo-Q, which combines sudoku with general knowledge.

Sudoku is now available in a wide variety of formats.  Books, magazines, and newspapers provide print versions.  Sudoku can also be found on computer software, mobile device downloads, and websites.  There are even sudoku solver programs, some of which are available on the internet, to help solve even the most difficult sudoku puzzle. 

In March 2006, Lucca, Italy, was home to the first-ever world sudoku championship.  The winner was Jana Tylová, an accountant from the Czech Republic.  The second championship is scheduled for Prague in late March, 2007.

While knowing the history of sudoku will not help you solve the puzzles, it may help you answer the questions that begin with “Why would anybody…”