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History
The puzzle was designed by Howard Garns, a retired architect and freelance
puzzle constructor, and first published in 1979. Although likely inspired by the
Latin square invention of Leonhard Euler, Garns added a third dimension (the
regional restriction) to the mathematical construct and (unlike Euler) presented
the creation as a puzzle, providing a partially-completed grid and requiring the
solver to fill in the rest. The puzzle was first published in New York by the
specialist puzzle publisher Dell Magazines in its magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles
and Word Games, under the title Number Place (which we can only assume Garns
named it).
The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in
April 1984 as Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る), which can be translated as
"the numbers must be single" or "the numbers must occur only once" (独身 literally
means "single; celibate; unmarried"). The puzzle was named by Kaji Maki (鍜治 真起),
the president of Nikoli. At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku
(数独, pronounced SUE-dough-coo; sū = number, doku = single); it is a common
practice in Japanese to take only the first kanji of compound words to form a
shorter version. In 1986, Nikoli introduced two innovations which guaranteed the
popularity of the puzzle: the number of givens was restricted to no more than 32
and puzzles became "symmetrical" (meaning the givens were distributed in
rotationally symmetric cells).
In 1989, Loadstar/Softdisk Publishing published DigitHunt on the Commodore 64,
which was apparently the first home computer version of Sudoku. At least one
publisher still uses that title.
Yoshimitsu Kanai published his computerized puzzle generator under the name
Single Number for the Apple Macintosh [11] in 1995 in Japanese and English, and
in 1996 for the Palm (PDA) [12].
Bringing the process full-circle, Dell Magazines, which publishes the original
Number Place puzzle, now also publishes two Sudoku magazines: Original Sudoku
and Extreme Sudoku. Additionally, Kappa reprints Nikoli Sudoku in GAMES Magazine
under the name Squared Away; the New York Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe,
Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle now also publish the puzzle. It is
also often included in puzzle anthologies, such as The Giant 1001 Puzzle Book
(under the title Nine Numbers).
Within the context of puzzle history, parallels are often cited to Rubik's Cube,
another logic puzzle popular in the 1980s. Sudoku has been called the "Rubik's
cube of the 21st century".
Three days later The Daily Mail began to publish the puzzle under the name "Codenumber".
The Daily Telegraph introduced its first Sudoku by its puzzle compiler Michael
Mepham on 19 January 2005 and other Telegraph Group newspapers took it up very
quickly. Nationwide News Pty Ltd began publishing the puzzle in The Daily
Telegraph of Sydney on 20 May 2005; five puzzles with solutions were printed
that day. The immense surge in popularity of Sudoku in British newspapers and
internationally has led to it being dubbed in the world media in 2005 the
"fastest growing puzzle in the world".
There is no doubt that it was not until the British Daily Telegraph introduced
the puzzle on a daily basis on 23 February 2005 with the full front-page
treatment advertising the fact, that the other UK national newspapers began to
take real interest. The Telegraph continued to splash the puzzle on its front
page, realizing that it was gaining sales simply by its presence. Until then the
Times had kept very quiet about the huge daily interest that its daily Sudoku
competition had aroused. That newspaper already had plans for taking advantage
of their market lead, and a first Sudoku book was already on the stocks before
any other national UK papers had realised just how popular Sudoku might be.
By April and May 2005 the puzzle had become popular in these publications and it
was rapidly introduced to several other national British newspapers including
The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun (where it was labelled Sun Doku), and The
Daily Mirror. As the name Sudoku became well-known in Britain, the Daily Mail
adopted it in place of its earlier name "Codenumber". Newspapers competed to
promote their Sudoku puzzles, with The Times and the Daily Mail each claiming to
have been the first to feature Sudoku.
The rapid rise of Sudoku from relative obscurity in Britain to a front-page
feature in national newspapers attracted commentary in the media (see References
below) and parody (such as when The Guardian's G2 section advertised itself as
the first newspaper supplement with a Sudoku grid on every page [13]). Sudoku
became particularly prominent in newspapers soon after the 2005 general election
leading some commentators to suggest that it was filling the gaps previously
occupied by election coverage. A simpler explanation is that the puzzle attracts
and retains readers—Sudoku players report an increasing sense of satisfaction as
a puzzle approaches completion. 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 (at page 391). On 2 August 2005 the BBC's programme guide Radio Times
started to feature a weekly Super Sudoku.
CBS has run several stories concerning Sudoku, including on the Early Show in
Summer 2005, and on the CBS Evening News that autumn, on October 26.
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