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Best of all, anyone can do sudoku! There's just one simple rule: Fill in the empty boxes in the nine-by-nine grid, so that every row, column, and three-by-three square contains the numbers 1 through 9, without repeating. It's a cinch! So whether you're on the beach, at the park, or relaxing in your backyard hammock, spend your summer with sudoku. Once you try one sudoku puzzle, you'll be hooked!
Witness the crossword puzzle in the 1920s, the jigsaw puzzle in the 1930s, Rubik's Cube in the 1980s, and other crazes before and after.
Now to this list of mass-insanity makers add a modest little brainteaser called sudoku. It comes to us via Japan, where the name is short for suji wa dokushin ni kagiru ("only single numbers allowed"). Japanese magazines consisting entirely of sudoku puzzles are said to sell six hundred thousand copies a month. Nearly every daily newspaper in London is publishing one or more sudoku puzzles, and as I write this, a collection of sudoku is the bestselling book in Britain. People all over the globe are falling under its spell.
Why the Furor?
Like all great puzzles that catch the popular fancy, sudoku is based on a simple idea. In its usual form, sudoku has a 9 x 9-square grid, with heavy lines dividing it into nine 3 x 3 boxes. The object is to fill the grid with numbers so that every row, every column, and every 3 x 3 box contains the digits from 1 to 9, without repeating. Some digits are placed in the grid to get you started.
That's all there is to it--no adding or other math involved. It's a game of pure logic.
Sudoku can be played at any difficulty level, and it is surprisingly addictive. At the easiest level, once you get the hang of it, solving is almost hypnotic as you work the numbers across, down, and around the grid. Experts can enjoy trying to solve sudoku faster and faster.
Medium-level sudoku puzzles provide fewer or less-helpful clues, and, thus, are more challenging and take longer to do. At the hardest level, where the minimum of information is provided to yield unique solutions, sudoku will severely test your powers of reasoning.
How It All Began
While the sudoku craze started abroad, the puzzle itself was invented in the United States, where it was originally called "Number Place." The first example of it appeared in Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games magazine in May 1979. Dozens more examples followed in other Dell publications.
"Number Place" did not carry a byline. However, a search of the alphabetical lists of contributors at the fronts of these magazines (from 1979 through the mid-1980s) reveals one name that appeared in every issue containing "Number Place" and in no issue that did not contain it. That name is Howard Garns. By virtually certain deduction, this is the puzzle's inventor.
No one at Dell today has any recollection of Howard Garns. My research, though, has found he was an architect, a partner in the firm Garns and Moore, in Indianapolis, Indiana, from which he retired in the 1970s. He was seventy-four years old when he sold his first "Number Place" puzzle. He died in 1989, not living long enough to see his brainchild become an international success.
After Garns stopped contributing "Number Place," other puzzle makers began creating their own for Dell. During the 1980s, an editor for Nikoli puzzle magazines in Japan saw one of these, took it home, changed its name to sudoku, and introduced it in his publications, where it became a hit. In 1997, a retired judge from New Zealand saw a Nikoli book of sudoku puzzles, was smitten by it, started making his own sudoku, eventually convinced The Times of London to print them (beginning in November 2004) . . . and the rest, as they say, is history.
Discover Sudoku for Yourself
This book contains one hundred and fifty original sudoku puzzles carefully calibrated for difficulty--from easy to hard.
These puzzles were created by Peter Ritmeester and the staff of PZZL.com. Peter is the general secretary of the World Puzzle Federation, which organizes the annual World Puzzle Championship (in which sudoku puzzles and variations have been a popular staple for years). He is also the founder/president of PZZL.com, an Internet technology company devoted to puzzles and games. His work appears on the Web sites of The New York Times and The Times of London, and in print in publications in the Netherlands, Italy, Nigeria, Dubai, Singapore, Finland, and elsewhere around the globe. No one makes better sudoku.
Soon you'll see for yourself. Pick up a pencil. Can you do sudoku?
--Will Shortz
Copyright © 2006 by Will Shortz.
Overview
People everywhere are testing their wits with sudoku, the nation's latest brain-teasing sensation. And what better way to spend the summer than with Summertime Pocket Sudoku? From New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz comes this latest collection of 150 sudoku puzzles, ranging in difficulty from easy to challenging, making it the perfect gift for anyone who hasn't yet discovered the global phenomenon of sudoku.
Best of all, anyone can do sudoku! There's just one simple ...