How to play sudoku
Contrary to what some believe, Sudoku actually involves no arithmatic or mathematical calculation. The game, in fact, is simply just a game of logic. It can be played by people of all ages as the rules are simple and easy to learn.
Sudoku Objectives
In order to successfully complete a game of Sudoku, you must fill all blank squares with the numbers 1 through 9 while following three simple rules:
Row Constraints
Each row must have the numbers 1 through 9 without any repeating.
Column Constraints
Each column must have the numbers 1 through 9 without any repeating.
Minigrid Constraints
Each 3x3 minigrid must have the numbers 1 through 9 without any repeating.
To begin a puzzle, you are given a blank board with several numbers already filled for you. The number and position of blank cells remaining determine the difficulty of the puzzle.
History of Sudoku
Number puzzles first appeared in newspapers in the late 19th century, when French puzzle setters began experimenting with removing numbers from magic squares. Le Siècle, a Paris-based daily, published a partially completed 9×9 magic square with 3×3 sub-squares in 1892. It was not a Sudoku because it contained double-digit numbers and required arithmetic rather than logic to solve, but it shared key characteristics: each row, column and sub-square added up to the same number.
Within three years Le Siècle's rival, La France, refined the puzzle so that it was almost a modern Sudoku. It simplified the 9×9 magic square puzzle so that each row and column contained only the numbers 1–9, but did not mark the sub-squares. Although they are unmarked, each 3×3 sub-square does indeed comprise the numbers 1–9. However, the puzzle cannot be considered the first Sudoku because, under modern rules, it has two solutions. The puzzle setter ensured a unique solution by requiring 1–9 to appear in both diagonals.
These weekly puzzles were a feature of newspaper titles including L'Echo de Paris for about a decade but disappeared about the time of the First World War.
According to Will Shortz, the modern Sudoku was most likely designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor from Indiana, and first published in 1979 by Dell Magazines as Number Place (the earliest known examples of modern Sudoku). Garns's name was always present on the list of contributors in issues of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games that included Number Place, and was always absent from issues that did not. He died in 1989 before getting a chance to see his creation as a worldwide phenomenon. It is unclear if Garns was familiar with any of the French newspapers listed above.
The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984 as Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る, Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru?), which can be translated as "the digits must be single" or "the digits are limited to one occurrence." At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku by Maki Kaji (鍜治 真起, Kaji Maki?), taking only the first kanji of compound words to form a shorter version. In 1986, Nikoli introduced two innovations: the number of givens was restricted to no more than 32, and puzzles became "symmetrical" (meaning the givens were distributed in rotationally symmetric cells). It is now published in mainstream Japanese periodicals, such as the Asahi Shimbun.
Play Sudoku
Copyright 2008 © Skylar Anderson. All Rights Reserved
Beautiful Design by: Indianapolis Web Design - Skylar Anderson