History of Sudoku

The Sudoku Numbers Puzzle reached the shores of Malaysia about six months after it hit the Crossword puzzle pages of leading British newspapers in November 2004. From May 2005, newspapers in more than 50 countries, spanning the whole world, started to introduce Sudoku to their readers. The readership in all these countries have taken to Sudoku with frenzy expected to eclipse the Rubik?s cube craze of the 80?s.

Sudoku in Japanese can be translated to ?single number?. This was the name given to the puzzle when it was abbreviated from ?Suji wa dokushin ni kagiru?, which stood for ?the number must be single?. Kaji Maki the president of Nikoli introduced the puzzle in Japan in April 1984 in the Monthly Nikolist.

However, the origins of Sudoku have been traced back to the 18th century. Leonhard Euler, born in Basle, Switzerland in 1707, was a mathematical genius who had authored numerous books and papers. He became blind in his later years but continued his work with mathematics and in 1783 introduced ?Latin Squares? which is considered the precursor to Number Place.

The person credited with the current worldwide popularity of Sudoku is Wayne Gould, a New Zealander and retired Hong Kong High Court Judge, who spotted the Sudoku puzzle in a Japanese bookshop in 1997. He developed a computer program over the next six years and in October 2004 offered to supply The Times in Britain, daily puzzles. The Times published the first Sudoku puzzle on 12th Nov. 2004. Three days later the The Daily Mail launched the puzzle with the name ?Codenumber?. This was the starting point of the current Sudoku craze sweeping across the world

In Malaysia, The Malay Mail and The Star started publishing Sudoku puzzles daily from June 2005. This was followed by Sin Chew Daily in Nov. and The New Straits Times in Dec. 2005, both have introduced competitions. Subsequently, in 2006 the Sun started publishing puzzles on Mondays with book prizes.

The first Malaysian Sudoku Competition was organised by Sudoku Event Management on 18th Sept. 2005 with the YMCA of KL as Sponsor and co-organiser. This was followed by a second competition held on 20th Nov. 2005 at the same venue.