Sudoku Origins
Did you know that even though sudoku is a Japanese name, the actual sudoku origins is more of European and American? Surprised? Yes, sudoku is actually a cross fertilization of cultures.
What's even more surprising is that sudoku is not the first number game ever developed. Before the Japanese introduced sudoku, there were the Latin Squares which uses the same concept as sudoku number placement puzzles where the numbers in a grid should appear only once and can be place up and down.
In Japanese, 数独 (sudoku), the 数 (su) means number while the 独 (doku) means single. So, the objective of this number puzzle game is to place the numbers correctly so that they will fit in nicely. Sudoku was invented in 1979 by a 74 year old retired architect named Howard Garnes who created a puzzle that had a grid that was partially filled with numbers which can only be solved by fillling in the rest of the squares with the right combination of numbers.
Sudoku was later published in New York in the late 70’s by specialist puzzle publisher Dell Magazines under the name of Number Place. Number Place was later introduced in Japan in April 1984 by the Nikoli company in its paper, the Monthly Nikolist. Nikoli’s president, Kaji Maki named the game "数字は独身に限る" which means the rules of the game is that the number must be single, or the number must occur only once.
As the name of the game was rather long, it was later abbreviated to Sudoku. Mikoli later made some innovations to sudoku In 1986 by having a maximum of 32 numbers will be given in each puzzle and the numbers were distributed in rotationally balanced squares. These little innovations are what made sudoku even more popular than before.
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