The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Maki Kaji ( 鍜治 真起, Kaji Maki ), president of the Nikoli puzzle company, in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984 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"). Whether or not Garns was familiar with any of the French newspapers listed above is unclear. He died in 1989 before getting a chance to see his creation as a worldwide phenomenon. Garns' name was always present on the list of contributors in issues of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games that included Number Place and was always absent from issues that did not. The modern Sudoku was most likely designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor from Connersville, Indiana, and first published in 1979 by Dell Magazines as Number Place (the earliest known examples of modern Sudoku). These weekly puzzles were a feature of French newspapers such as L'Écho de Paris for about a decade, but disappeared about the time of World War I. Although they were unmarked, each 3×3 subsquare did indeed comprise the numbers 1–9, and the additional constraint on the broken diagonals led to only one solution. It simplified the 9×9 magic square puzzle so that each row, column, and broken diagonals contained only the numbers 1–9, but did not mark the subsquares. On July 6, 1895, Le Siècle 's rival, La France, refined the puzzle so that it was almost a modern Sudoku and named it carré magique diabolique ('diabolical magic square'). It was not a Sudoku because it contained double-digit numbers and required arithmetic rather than logic to solve, but it shared key characteristics: each row, column, and subsquare added up to the same number. Le Siècle, a Paris daily, published a partially completed 9×9 magic square with 3×3 subsquares on November 19, 1892. Number puzzles appeared in newspapers in the late 19th century, when French puzzle setters began experimenting with removing numbers from magic squares. History From La France newspaper, July 6, 1895: The puzzle instructions read, "Use the numbers 1 to 9 nine times each to complete the grid in such a way that the horizontal, vertical, and two main diagonal lines all add up to the same total." Predecessors newspaper, and then The Times (London), in 2004, thanks to the efforts of Wayne Gould, who devised a computer program to rapidly produce unique puzzles. However, the modern Sudoku only began to gain widespread popularity in 1986 when it was published by the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli under the name Sudoku, meaning "single number". The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution.įrench newspapers featured variations of the Sudoku puzzles in the 19th century, and the puzzle has appeared since 1979 in puzzle books under the name Number Place. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 × 3 subgrids that compose the grid (also called "boxes", "blocks", or "regions") contains all of the digits from 1 to 9. Click/Tap Continue to show your rank and time.Ĭlick/Tap to see the completed grid for a few seconds.įeatures vary depending on your device, its orientation and screen space.Sudoku ( / s uː ˈ d oʊ k uː, - ˈ d ɒ k-, s ə-/ Japanese: 数独, romanized: sūdoku, lit.'digit-single' originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. When you have completed the Sudoku a ‘congratulations’ message will appear. Click/Tap Resume to go back to the Sudoku.Ĭlick/Tap Reset to clear the grid and restart the Timer. SettingsĬlick/Tap to show/hide extra highlighting of correct rows, columns and 3×3 boxes.Ĭlick/Tap to allow/disallow deleting correct numbers in completed rows, columns or 3×3 boxesĬlick/Tap to show Help. The Hint counter will tell you how many of your five Hints remain.Īlternatively, Click/Tap the Check tick and select Clear to remove any incorrect numbers from the squares or select Reveal to highlight the incorrect entries or Cancel.Ĭlick/Tap to abandon play and return to the home screen, saving your current progress. If you get stuck, select the square you want to fill and Click/Tap the Hint wand. The Timer will stop but you won’t be able to see the puzzle.Ĭlick/Tap Resume playing to go back to the puzzle.įor mobile devices where there’s less screen space, you may need to Click/Tap Pause to show your time. When you have correctly completed a line, column or a 3 x 3 box it will be highlighted and any practice numbers will disappear.Ĭlick/Tap Pause to have a break.
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