History of SuDoKu

Despite the Japanese acronym, Sudoku originated from the United States .First published under the name " Number Place " by Dell Magazines in 1979, the puzzle was anonymously designed by Howard Garns, a retired architect. However, it was in Japan that the puzzle gained popularity. First introduced to the Japanese market in April of 1984, under the name Suuhi wa dokushin ni kagiru , which is translate d translated as "the numbers must be single ," . The puzzle's popularity rapidly increased, it soon became shortened to and known as " Sudoku ".

Sudoku was championed in London by Mr. Wayne Gould, a retired Hong Kong judge who saw the Sudoku puzzle in a Japanese publication. On February 23, 2005, The Daily Telegraph introduced the puzzle on a daily basis and the newspaper's sales increased dramatically due to the readership playing Sudoku. The British media took notice and last year, the first live TV Sudoku game program, "Sky One," aired. Sudoku spread throughout the European Common Market in September of 2005 and started garnering attention in the United States during the latter part of 2005. Today, virtually every major daily in the United States has a Sudoku puzzle and 40 of the top 50 - including the top spot - of Nielsen's BookScan for adult "games" books are Sudoku books.

Sudoku is now a global phenomenon. Due to its nonlinguistic nature, (the universal languare of numbers) no translations are necessary when introducing it to new countries and anyone can learn to play. Billions of possible puzzles combinations! , each with its unique solution that can be reached from various starts, Sudoku provides inexhaustible and addictive fun and satisfaction.

Sudoku has been compared to the 1980s world craze of the Rubik's Cube. Rubik was a C zechoslovakian Hungarian inventor who licensed the principal and trademark of the Rubik's Cube to the Ideal Toy Corporation of New York . , which Ideal made over 50 million tens of millions of Rubik's Cubes and variations from 1980 through 1985. CBS, Inc. purchased Ideal and then sold the rights to Milton Bradley. Rubik's Cube has become a staple in the world market and recently celebrated its 25 th year.