What Is Sudoku Really?
What is Sudoku?
Even if you have not had a chance to play Sudoku yet, surely you have heard about it from friends and family who rave about this challenging and addictive puzzle. Sudoku is a number based puzzle that requires you to fill out small 3 by 3 grids that are fitted into a larger 9 by 9 grid. You have the freedom to plug in any number from 1-9 as long as you follow one primary rule; no number is to be repeated even once, in any row or column of each square.
Unlike puzzles that are merely for fun, Sudoku has been associated with improving brain activity because one has to use sheer logic to solve the entire game. Puzzle setters partially fill the empty squares to give a lead for you to start. Easy to learn yet difficult to master, Sudoku has been extremely popular all around the world. Its various levels, amateur and expert ones, attract people from all ages who are seen playing Sudoku just about everywhere they go.
What is Sudoku: The Sudoku tale through history
The first game of Sudoku dates back to 1793 when a Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler, who is widely known as the Father of Sudoku, thought of it. According to Euler, the statistical concept of Latin Squares could be used to arrange numbers in such a way that none is repeated in a 9×9 grid and the sum of all the numbers in one grid region would add up to the same, regardless of the rows or columns.
Back in the 18th century, this concept did not pick up as well as it did in the 20th century. The modern day Sudoku was designed by a retired architect, Howard Garns; he added a third dimension to the rules of the game, by stating that none of the numbers could be repeated even within each 3 by 3 squares.
The first such game, which was named the Number Palace, was published in the Dell Magazine in 1979 in New York. However, it took another great push by a Japanese puzzle making company, Nikoli in 1984, who named this puzzle Sudoku and introduced the game in the local market with a number of alterations as we see today.
Current popularity of the puzzle & media presence
It was not until late 2004, that Sudoku took gaming zones by storm. Once it was published in the London Times because of the efforts of Wayne Gould, a computer programmer, users started to solve this as a pastime while at work or when commuting from work. Within a matter of days, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph started publishing the puzzle under various names and they continue to do so until today.
After the print media, Channel 4 introduced Sudoku for the first time on their Teletext service, followed by the BBC that started a weekly Super Sudoku feature. Today, Sudoku has made its way into online forums and fan clubs that are solely dedicated to this puzzle.
What is Sudoku … I mean, what is ‘next’ for Sudoku?
Apart from Sudoku Championships that are annual events held in different countries, the fierce battle waged among gamers for finishing a game of Sudoku has encouraged developers to design a Sudoku application for tablets and mobile phones. The SUDOKUPDQ application is miles ahead of the Sudoku that was once played on paper. With features such as virtual multi player options, highly expert levels and bets placed on the quickest time taken for completing the game; SUDOKUPDQ is definitely the next level of this puzzle.