Origins of the game: a global phenomenon

Switzerland

Latin Squares

The game, known in some newspapers and magazines as Sudoku, can trace its origins to an 18th century mathematician, Leonhard Euler. He introduced a puzzle, which he called Latin Squares, where each number must appear only once in each row or column.

Examples of similar puzzles have also been found in Arabic literature over 700 years ago.

America

Number Place

The puzzle in its current, more complex form, with nine additional squares to complete within the outer framework, first appears to be recorded in a New York puzzle magazine in the late 1970’s. Published by Dell Magazine in "Math Puzzles and Logic Problems," it was called Number Place. The compiler’s name is unknown.

Japan

Suji wa dokushin ni kagir(u) or Sudoku

From America, the puzzle was introduced to Japan, by the Japanese puzzle publishers, Nikoli. The company’s president called the puzzle "suji wa dokushin ni kagir(u)", which translates roughly as "the numbers must be single". Nikoli abbreviated the name to Sudoku and obtained a trademark for the use of the name in Japan, forcing other puzzle publishers to invent alternative names.

United Kingdom

Codenumber, Sudoku and other names

In 1997, the puzzle was discovered in Japan by Wayne Gould, who spent the next six years developing a computer program to generate the puzzles. He sold his puzzles to The Times in London, which first published them in November 2004. Its popularity soon spread to other newspapers and magazines.

America and elsewhere

Number Place, Squared Away, Nine Numbers

The game was reintroduced to America and appears in various publications as Number Place, Squared Away and Nine Numbers, just to give a few examples.