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By Terry Solomon
Sudoku Puzzles are brain teasers that have also been called
wordless crossword puzzles. Sudoku Puzzles are often solved
through lateral thinking and have been making a large impact
all across the world.
Also known as Number Place, Sudoku puzzles are actually
logic-based placement puzzles. The object of the game is to
enter a numerical digit from 1 through 9 in each cell that is
found on a 9 x 9 grid which is sundivided into 3 x 3 subgrids
or regions. Several digits are often given in some cells.
These
are referred as givens. Ideally, at the end of the game, every
row, column, and region must contain only one instance of each
numeral from 1 through 9. Patience and logic are two qualities
needed in order to complete the game.
Number puzzles very much similar to the Sudoku Puzzles have
already been in existence and have found publication in many
newspapers for over a century now. For instance, Le Siecle, a
daily newspaper based in France, featured, as early as 1892, a
9x9 grid with 3x3 sub-squares, but used only double-digit
numbers instead of the current 1-9. Another French newspaper,
La France, created a puzzle in 1895 that utilized the numbers
1-9 but had no 3x3 sub-squares, but the solution does carry
1-9
in each of the 3 x 3 areas where the sub-squares would be.
These
puzzles were regular features in several other newspapers,
including L'Echo de Paris for about a decade, but it
unfortunately disappeared with the advent of the first world
war.
Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance
puzzle constructor, was considered the designer of the modern
Sudoku Puzzles. His design was first published in 1979 in New
York by Dell, through its magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles and
Word
Games under the heading Number Place. Garns' creation was most
likely inspired by the Latin square invention of Leonhard
Euler, with a few modifications, basically, with the addition
of a regional restriction and the presentation of the game as
a
puzzle, providing a partially-complete grid and requiring the
solver to fill in the empty cells.
Sudoku Puzzles were then taken to Japan by the puzzle
publishing company Nikoli. It introduced the game in its paper
Monthly Nikoli sometime in April 1984. Nikoli president Maki
Kaji gave it the name Sudoku, a name that the company holds
trademark rights over; other Japanese publications which
featured the puzzle have to settle for alternative names.
In 1989, Sudoku Puzzles entered the video games arena when it
was published as DigitHunt on the Commodore 64. It was
introduced by Loadstar/Softdisk Publishing. Since then, other
computerized versions of the Sudoku Puzzles have been
developed. For instance, Yoshimitsu Kanai made several
computerized puzzle generator of the game under the name
Single
Number for the Apple Macintosh in 1995 both in English and in
Japanese language; for the Palm (PDA) in 1996; and for Mac OS
X
in 2005.
About The Author: For more valuable information on sudoku
puzzles, please visit www.sudoku-puzzles.com
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