Australians Embrace Japanese Craze of Sudoku Number Puzzles

A Japanese craze from the mid-80’s, Sudoku, has swept through Australia along with the rest of the world. Australian newspapers such as Australian News Limited, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Courier Mail and The Daily Telegraph helped launch the popularity of Sudoku in Australia in 2005.

Sudoku is a logic puzzle often found beside the crosswords that has a deceptively simple rule: fill the 9×9 grid with numbers so that each column, row and 3×3 sub-grid contains the numbers 1 through 9.

With its roots from an 18th century game called “Latin Squares”, Sudoku didn’t catch on with the masses until the Japanese publisher Nikoli introduced the puzzle in Japan. The Japanese phrase “Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru” meaning “Numbers must be single” was eventually nicknamed “Sudoku” with “su” meaning “number” and “doku” meaning “single” or literally “unmarried”. The word is pronounced SUE-dough-koo.

Closer to Australia, a New Zealander, retired judge Wayne Gould, came across a Sudoku book while in Japan. He spent several years researching and calculating and eventually designed a computer program that generated Sudoku puzzles. By 2004, he approached the Times in Great Britain and the Times first Sudoku puzzle was published in November 2004. The year 2005 brought numerous bestselling Sudoku books, handheld and computer Sudoku games, websites, blogs and forums devoted to the game, Sudoku tournaments and mobile versions for cellphones.

A typical Sudoku puzzle contains a 9×9 grid. Within the grid is a subset of 3×3 grids. Some numbers are pre-filled in. The player must fill in the rest of the cells making sure that each row, column and sub-grid is filled with the numbers 1 through 9. Using logic rather than actual math, the player must figure out where to place the numbers. With billions of combinations, no two puzzles are the same and the puzzles range from easy to hard.

Australian Sudoku publications include Lovatts Super Sudoku magazine which features over 100 Sudoku puzzles each issue. Lovatts also offers a website for solving daily Australian Sudoku puzzles online. Lovatts caters to Australian Sudoku fans, New Zealand Sudoku fans and those living in the United Kingdom. Their website does offer subscriptions to other countries around the globe.

But Sudoku choices are limited to Australia, Sudoku is a craze that has gone worldwide. Take a peek at the local bookstore and there’s certain to be a variety of Sudoku books, and magazines available.

Whether the Sudoku puzzles have the staying power to maintain this level of popularity remains to be seen but for now Australians and the masses love it.