Sudoku History

The world of Sudoku – a bit of history

Sudoku (pronounced sue doe koo with no emphasis on any syllable) has much in common with its younger relative, the crossword. Yes, younger, because Sudoku predates the word puzzle by many years.

Blind Swiss physicist Leonard Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, made huge contributions to the advancement of science. He was so prolific that his collected works filled over 70 volumes. He worked as a professor of mathematics in St Petersburg and later in Berlin.

The concept of Magic Squares had been known since at least medieval times, but in his paper, in 1783, Euler showed how to construct Magic Squares with a certain number of cells. He called it a Latin Square because he used Roman numerals. At the time that he created it, he was 75 and completely blind after an unsuccessful cataract operation. He was blind for the last 17 years of his life yet due to his amazing memory he managed to perform elaborate calculations in his head.

He claimed that he made some of his greatest discoveries while holding a baby on his arm with other children playing round his feet. What a man!

Euler’s Latin Squares were not heard of again until, just over a century later, Frenchman MB Meyniel created a 9 x 9 grid based on this Latin square and it appeared in the French newspaper La France on 6th July 1895. Other mainstream newspapers competed to create better models for the puzzle in the 1890s. The craze continued until 1914, when World War I put an end to such frivolity, and the puzzle lay forgotten for many years.

It's interesting to note that the crossword was invented in 1913, by Yorkshireman Arthur Wynne. Was it a coincidence or did the crossword take over from the Latin Square?

Fast forward to the 1980s when an American publication introduced the puzzle (Latin Square) as the Number Place. Japanese puzzle publishers Nikoli picked up the idea and gave Sudoku its name.

Incidentally, the word is Japanese for single number, but could also translate to one singularity or soul or unmarried.

Next, Kiwi Wayne Gould, a retired Hong Kong judge found the puzzle in a Japanese bookstore and spent the next few years refining it before introducing it to British newspapers.

So, over the years the Sudoku has travelled from Switzerland to France to America to Japan to England and around the whole world now.

We hope you have as much fun solving this collection of challenging Sudoku puzzles as we did compiling them. Everyone here at Lovatts is now addicted to Sudoku and can’t get enough of these fiendishly clever logic squares.

Play Lovatts Online Sudoku	SUDOKU NEWS
Sudoku - Read the Wikipedia Article	Sudoku on YouPlay.com