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What is the history behind sudoku?

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What is the history behind sudoku?

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  1. 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.[14] 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.[15]

    According to Will Shortz, 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.[5] He died in 1989 before getting a chance to see his creation as a worldwide phenomenon.[5] It is unclear if Garns was familiar with any of the French newspapers listed above.

    The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984[5] as Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る, 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 (鍜治 真起, Kaji Maki?), taking only the first kanji of compound words to form a shorter version.[5] In 1986, Nikoli introduced two innovations: the number of givens was restricted to no more than 32, and puzzles became "symmetrical" (meaning the givens were distributed in rotationally symmetric cells).[4] Knowing that British newspapers have a long history of publishing crosswords and other puzzles, he promoted Sudoku to The Times in Britain, which launched it on 12 November 2004 (calling it Su Doku).

    The rapid rise of Sudoku in Britain from relative obscurity to a front-page feature in national newspapers attracted commentary in the media and parody (such as when The Guardian's G2 section advertised itself as the first newspaper supplement with a Sudoku grid on every page[16]). Recognizing the different psychological appeals of easy and difficult puzzles, The Times introduced both side by side on 20 June 2005. From July 2005, Channel 4 included a daily Sudoku game in their Teletext service. On 2 August, the BBC's programme guide Radio Times featured a weekly Super Sudoku which features a 16x16 grid.

    Even the Greeks owe the publication of their first Sudoku magazine to British influence. It was at Heathrow airport in the summer of 2005 that a Greek computer magazine publisher first laid eyes on a British Sudoku magazine and - realizing the opportunity - proceeded to purchase the necessary software and quickly launch the first local Sudoku magazine that became an instant success.

    In the United States, the first newspaper to publish a Sudoku puzzle by Wayne Gould was The Conway Daily Sun (New Hampshire), in 2004.[17]



    The world's first live TV Sudoku show, 1 July 2005, Sky One.The world's first live TV Sudoku show, Sudoku Live, was a puzzle contest first broadcast on 1 July 2005 on Sky One. It was presented by Carol Vorderman. Nine teams of nine players (with one celebrity in each team) representing geographical regions competed to solve a puzzle. Each player had a hand-held device for entering numbers corresponding to answers for four cells. Phil Kollin of Winchelsea, England was the series grand prize winner taking home over £23,000 over a series of games. The audience at home was in a separate interactive competition, which was won by Hannah Withey of Cheshire.

    Later in 2005, the BBC launched SUDO-Q, a game show that combines Sudoku with general knowledge. However, it uses only 4x4 and 6x6 puzzles.

    Sudoku software is now also very popular on PCs, websites, and mobile phones. It comes with many distributions of Linux. It has also been released on portable video game handhelds such as the Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, the Game Boy Advance, and even on several iPod models. One of the most popular video games featuring Sudoku is Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!. Critically and commercially well received, it generated particular praise for its Sudoku implementation[1][2][3] and sold more than 8 million copies worldwide.[4] Due to its popularity, Nintendo made a second Brain Age game titled Brain Age2, which has over 100 new sudoku puzzles and other activities.


  2. ther are 9 squares. so you have to put a number from 1-9 in each square. But the same number cant be in the same row or colomn. and if you didnt undersand that you could just google it up. Or wait for more awnsers. Hope i helped. Good Luck

  3. The real history of Sudoku goes back many centuries and spans two distinct cultures that each are laying claim to having invented the puzzle. Be that as it may, in truth Magic Squares has little to do with Sudoku and apart from striking similarities in the two types of puzzles, there is nothing else that is relevant to each. However, the puzzle known as Latin Squares is more closely associated with Sudoku.

    In fact, the first instance of Sudoku can only be traced to the year 1979 when Dell Magazine published the first such puzzle though it wasn’t at the time known by its present name, and in fact it was then known as Number Place which in turn was inspired by Latin Square.

    The puzzle actually only got to be called Sudoku only after it was published in Monthly Nikolist and even then it was called “Suuji wa dokushin ni kaguru” which was abbreviated to simple Sudoku that in turn means “single or unwed number”. Since this instance that took place in 1984

  4. hi hesol aziz invented it because he got locked out!

    PS:oopy doopy!

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