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The-colorful-history-of-sudoku
By Terence-Uniacke
People today tend to marvel at the accomplishments of ancient civilizations, such as demonstrated by the pyramids of Egypt. Those ancient people had such creativity and intelligence, and they did not have TV or radio to entertain themselves. Instead, they relied upon their minds for entertainment, creativity, and solutions to problems.

From time to time, when we find the regular media is rather dull, or we feel that our minds need a bit of a workout, we will turn to brain twisters and riddles, or crossword puzzles. It is one of the ways that we explore our thought processes, and how we encourage our own creative side. Without riddles and puzzles, our brains become rather dull themselves. All people have a deep need for activities that shape the mind and help us develop new ideas and concepts.

Some of the games we play today are based on those that were played in ancient times, with innovations and changes made over the centuries. Sudoku is a game that may well have been played in ancient times, and it has a beautiful simplicity, yet can be wonderfully challenging. And the history of Sudoku is fascinating, too.

The word “Sudoku” is derived from the word for “number place.” Based on the Japanese language, Sudoku indicates that it is a logic-based placement. Therefore, it is a kind of puzzle game. The first modern Sudoku puzzle was published in a US magazine in 1979. It was picked up by players in Japan in 1984 and was instantly popular. The original name of the game was abbreviated to Sudoku, which, translated into English, actually means “the digits must remain single.” There are also various different pronunciations of “Sudoku” throughout the world, but the basic elements of the game remain the same. And the mental power benefits also accrue wherever the game is played.

Howard Garns was a retired architect who loved creating puzzles as a freelance effort, and it appears he contributed the first-known version of Sudoku to a puzzle magazine in 1979. It is similar to the Latin Square, which has been much analyzed by Euler, and is an ancient game. Garns added a third dimension, improving on the design, and he offered his version with some of the fields already filled in. It is immediately popular with puzzle players worldwide once they try it for the first time.

Once the game had arrived in Japan, a few years after its invention, its name was changed from “Number Place” to “Sudoku.” A Japanese company copyrighted the name later on, and helped launch the game to Europe and around the world.

Originally, players always found newspapers or puzzle magazines for the source of new games, but in 1989 a computer version of Sudoku was introduced. Some people have even created a three dimensional version based on Rubik’s Cube.

By 1997, Sudoku had established an enormous worldwide following. In Hong Kong, Judge Wayne Gould decided to create a computer program that can make millions of variations of Sudoku puzzles. He made a deal with The Times of Britain, which began publishing a daily puzzle in 2004.

Nationwide, newspapers would print the puzzles and sell out quickly. World media acknowledged Sudoku as the “fastest growing puzzle in the world”. By 2005, Sudoku was at the peak of its popularity.

Knowing something of the history of Sudoku adds a nice touch to this enjoyable pastime. From its beginnings in the ancient world, to adaptation using modern computers, to global acceptance, Sudoku has come a long way in a short time. Thanks to Howard Garns for creating a puzzle that brings pleasure and brain stimulation to millions of people every day.

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Terence Uniacke is happiest writing for a variety of well-known contemporary online magazines, on hobby center and ultimate hobby topics.
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5 472 730 538 Different Sudokus
By Charles Hawkins
It all began with Leonard Euler, a mathematician from Switzerland who lived between 1707 and 1783. Only a year before his death he published an article about “a new kind of magical squares”. Today we refer to these as Latin squares.

A Latin square consist of a grid that has an equal number of columns and rows. In each cell there should be a single symbol, most often a number. The total amount of different numbers allowed must not exceed the total number of rows (or columns, as they are just as many). Furthermore, the cells should be used in such a way that each symbol is displayed only once in each column and in each row.

A Sudoku puzzle is a special kind of Latin square consisting of nine rows and nine columns - 81 squares, in other words. And the idea is to fill these squares with the numbers 1 to 9. What separates the Sudoku puzzle from other Latin squares, is the rule regarding it’s boxes - the grid is further split in nine smaller squares, so called boxes.

The special rule in the Sudoku puzzle is that each box also must contain all of the numbers 1 to 9, only once. The idea of the game is to arrive at the final solution, starting from a grid with pre-determined numbers already filled in.

According to the German mathematician Bertram Felgenhauer there are 6 670 903 752 021 072 936 960 different Sudoku puzzles possible. But many of these Sudoku puzzles are very similar to each other. Essentially, it doesn’t make a difference of you switch places for a few of the numbers - switching places in all instances of digits one and two, for example. Furthermore, there is no change in the puzzle by changing the sequence of the first three rows in the grid. And there are many similar ways in wich the symbols can be moved around the grid, while the Sudoku puzzle still remains the same.

By calculating the number of unique puzzles possible instead, the number of possible Sudokus is significantly reduced. Frazer Jarvis and Ed Russel from Great Britain recently proved that there are 5 472 730 538 Sudoku puzzles that could be considered distinctly different.

Keeping in mind that each of these can be the result of thousands of different starting configurations, we can rest assured that we can keep playing our favorite little puzzle game for quite some time without running out of original Sudoku puzzles.

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Charles Hawkins is the webmaster of Sudokuhints.Info, where you can find many articles about playing Sudoku as well as on the many Sudoku variations available.