Friday, April 03, 2009

Remembering the History and Development of Sudoku

Sudoku puzzle with solution numbers marked in red.Image via Wikipedia

Ancient civilization is known for its creativity and intelligence. They also have different forms of entertainment. Unlike today, people are dependent on the benefit of modern technology. In every corner you will see inventions such as radios and televisions. This is how people today make use of their spare time. Sometimes, people also get bored with modern technology and turn to their mind and formulate their own brain twister in a form of riddles. This is how people explore their way of thinking and also their creativity. People naturally love activities that could twist their mind and form new ideas.

History speaks that some of the recent games that mankind have today are based on the ideas of early people, although with some innovations applied. Sudoku is one of the games that have existed since the ancient times. Perhaps this is the first time that you heard about the term. You might ask yourself what Sudoku is all about and where it originated.

The other name for Sudoku is number place. As you might think, it was derived from the Japanese language. This refers to a logic based placement. In other words, this is a type of puzzle game. It was published first in one of the magazines in United States in the year 1979 then followed in Japan until it gained its popularity.

If you are going to translate the name Sudoku into English phrase, it mans that “the digits must remain single”. It gathered various manners of pronunciation in different countries. Nevertheless, whatever the articulation is, the standards set on the games are never altered. According to the people who discovered Sudoku, the puzzle enhances your critical thinking. It makes you utilize arithmetic relationship between numbers that are not relevant with each other. There are also basic rules that are set for you to play Sudoku puzzle.

During his late 70’s, Howard Garns anonymously designed the puzzle Sudoku. He was known to be a retired architect and indeed a freelance puzzle constructor. Obviously, he has ideas on how to create the tricks of a puzzle because it has been a profession for him for quite long time. He deduced his idea from that of the Latin Square designed by Euler. Thus, he just placed some additional alteration to the game which he called the third dimension. He also provides the player with a partially-completed grid that will require the solver to complete the rest of the blank grids.

However, after Garns was able to develop it and introduce it in the US magazine, it was captured again in Japan by a person name Nikoli. That was the time that Maiki, President of Nikoli Sudoku was named because during the time of Garns he also has his own English translation. Before, the game is played manually when it started to get published in the newspaper of Japan and United States. It was in the year 1989 when a computer version of Sudoku was made available for the users under the Loadstar Publishing followed by the Apple Macintosh. In the year 2005, it totally came at its peak of popularity.

Behind the popularity of the Sudoku puzzle is the acknowledgment to Rubik’s cube. This is another puzzle game that was popular during the year 1980. In fact, some of the attributes of Sudoku was also patterned from Rubik’s puzzle. In the year 1997, the popularity of Sudoku in the media was overwhelming. Even the Hong Kong judge named Wayne Gould also became inclined to the game up to the point that he also developed his own version of the computerized version of Sudoku.

Nationwide, there was a press release that was published regularly in Japan that took the newspaper to sell the prints very quickly. It even reached the world media and was acknowledged as the “fastest growing puzzle in the world”. There is no doubt that until now, the history of Sudoku remains in the thoughts of people. They owe much gratitude to the development and discovery of Sudoku puzzle because without the people behind Sudoku they are not able to enjoy the pleasure that have been brought to them by the puzzle.

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