I remember about ten years ago, the Sudoku craze hit the U.S. Everyone was doing Sudoku when they waited at the airport. We even bought Sudoku books and did the Sudoku in the airline magazines and newspapers.
Well, it is time to bring Sudoku back.
Modern Sudoku sounds very “Asian” but is really the design of an engineer, Howard Garns in 1979. It was first published by Dell Magazines as Number Place. Though Garns is credited with modern Sudoku, it was introduced in Japan by Maki Kaji in the monthly paper, Nikolist in 1984. It is known as Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る), which can be translated as “the digits must be single”, or as “the digits are limited to one occurrence” (In Japanese, dokushin means an “unmarried person”). The name was later abbreviated to Sudoku (数独), taking only the first kanji of compound words to form a shorter version. “Sudoku” is a registered trademark in Japan and the puzzle is generally referred to as Number Place (ナンバープレース, Nanbāpurēsu) or, more informally, a shortening of the two words, Num(ber) Pla(ce) (ナンプレ, Nanpure).
Outside of Japan: In 1997, Hong Kong judge Wayne Gould saw a partly completed puzzle in a Japanese bookshop. Over six years, he developed a computer program to produce unique puzzles rapidly.[5] Knowing that British newspapers have a long history of publishing crosswords and other puzzles, he promoted Sudoku to The Times in Britain, which launched it on November 12, 2004 (calling it Su Doku). The first letter to The Times regarding Su Doku was published the following day on November 13 from Ian Payn of Brentford, complaining that the puzzle had caused him to miss his stop on the tube. Sudoku puzzles rapidly spread to other newspapers as a regular feature.
I can guarantee you that it requires a good amount of concentration. Did you know the fewest clues possible to solve a Sudoku puzzle is 17??
Sudoku claims to:
- Improves your memory. Memory and logic work side-by-side when you are playing Sudoku. …
- Stimulates your mind. …
- Reduces the chances of developing Alzheimers by keeping your brain active.
- Learns to do things quickly. …
- Increases your concentration power. …
- Feel Happy.
So, we can all use this, right? Buy a Sudoku book or try one in the newspaper or computer.
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