The origins of Sudoku can be traced back to 1979, when it’s first puzzle was created by a retired architect named Howard Garns. During this time, the puzzle was only termed as a “number placement” game, and it was inspired by the latin square invention of Leonhard Euler, but with the unit restrictions and partially filled squares. The puzzle was first published by Dell Magazines in their Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games.

It was not until 1984, that the puzzle game acquired its popularity in Japan. In April of 1984 the puzzle game was introduced by Nikoli in their monthly periodical Nikolist. It was during this time that the puzzle was called “Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru” which means “the number must be single” or in simpler terms, ” the number must occur only once”. This name was given by President Kaji Maki, who was the president of Nikoli, and it wasn’t until a later date that he abbreviated the name to “SudoKu”. In 1986, Nikoli presented two more innovations to the puzzle that greatly contributed to its global popularity. The first addition was the limitation of no more than 32 givens for a Sudoku and the second innovation was the creation of “symmetrical” puzzles, which meant that all the givens were distributed in rotationally symmetrical cells. Since then, Sudoku has grown in popularity across Japan and it is now being published in other periodicals, like Asahi Shimbun. Unto this very day, Nikoli still holds the trademark for the term “sudoku” in Japan and other publications are forced to use alternate terms for this number puzzle.

………. To Be Continued!

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