The History of Sudoku

Because of its Japanese name, many people assume that the popular game of
Sudoku originally came from Japan. However, it actually has its origins in America
and Europe, making it an international creation.

The original Sudoku can be traced back to Europe in the 18th century. A Swiss
mathematican called Leonhard Euler became fascinated by Latin Squares, in
which numbers appeared once in a grid vertically and horizontally. In the 1970s, a
man called Howard Garnes took Euler’s research further, inventing a puzzle which
he sold to an American magazine. It became a regular feature of the magazine, but
despite the puzzle’s popularity with its readers, it failed to make an impact
elsewhere in the USA.

In the 1980s, a Japanese puzzle company published its own version, and gave it
the name. Sudoku. Within a few months Sudoku puzzles were appearing regularly
in Japanese newspapers and magazines, and Sudoku puzzle books could be
found in every bookshop and on every newspaper stand across the country. It took
another 20 years, however, before the puzzle caught on in other countries. In 1997,
a New Zealander, Wayne Gould, came across a book of Sudoku puzzles in a
Japanese book shop in Hong Kong. He was fascinated by the puzzles, and wrote a
computer programme that could generate them. In 2004 he persuaded a national
British newspaper to start publishing the puzzles he was creating with the software.

It wasn’t long before Sudoku crossed the Atlantic, returning to the country where
the original game had first appeared. This time, it was adopted by newspapers all
over the USA, and became a national success. From there, it spread across the
world, becoming internationally popular. Today, an estimated 100 million people in
over 100 countries do Sudoku puzzles on a regular basis, making them as popular
as crosswords. Variations on the original version are continually being developed.
There are now Sudoku puzzles with 16 by 16 grids, puzzles that use words or
symbols, and there are even Sudoku apps for mobile phones.