The prolonged and exciting history of Sudoku is quite a mystery in itself. The name Sudoku is derived from Japan and is made up of the Japanese characters Su (which means ‘number’) and Doku (which means ‘single’), however it was not discovered in Japan. Sudoku emerged in Switzerland and then descended to Japan via the United States of America.
Sudoku has its origins in historic number puzzles. For tens of decades, people have been fascinated in developing and solving them. Puzzles have a way to encourage new development in the field of mathematics, as seen in the movie - A Beautiful Mind featuring Russell Crowe.
Sudoku was called “Latin Squares” or “Magic Squares” and one of the first indications of puzzles to surface in France in 1895. But, Sudoku as we know it today, was conceived by Howard Garns, a puzzle enthusiast from Indiana, USA in 1979. The puzzle was famously called “Number Place” as it involved putting numbers in blank spots on a 9 x 9 grid.
The “Number Place” game first emerged in Japan in 1984 where it was renamed “Sudoku”, which is an acronym for a Japanese expression - “Suji wa dokushin ni kagiru”. It means, the numbers are limited to a single occurrence. Sudoku managed to be extremely popular in Japan, where enthusiasts purchase more than 600,000 Sudoku magazines every month.
Do you want to know how to solve Sudokus but are not sure where to start? If yes, then you have come to the right place. Let’s begin.
Every Sudoku puzzle comes with a 9 x 9 grid of squares segmented in 3 x 3 boxes. There are a total 81 squares on a Sudoku grid and once the puzzle is solved, each square will have exactly one number.
Sudoku is a puzzle game with simple rules including:
To make it simple, no number must be repeated in a 3 x 3 box, row, or column.
As you start a new Sudoku puzzle, some squares will already be populated with numbers. Depending on the difficulty level, the numbers will block particular numbers to particular squares. It means squares where only a single number can be populated without jeopardizing the rules.
For instance, in the above example, numbers 1,8, and 9 cannot appear as the numbers are present in the 3 x 3 box. The numbers 3 and 5 cannot appear as they feature in the same column. The same is true for numbers 4,6, and 7. Hence, the only number which can be entered in the square is 2.
As you begin, keep including more numbers in the grid which help you use other numbers in additional squares. For example, when we added 2 to the bottom left in Step 3, we identified that the 2 in the top left box must be shifted to the bottom-right cell.
Kudos! You have mastered the entire process to solve a simple Sudoku game. Now, you simply need to repeat the steps till you have filled in all the cells in the grid. Intermediate Sudoku games may need you to use alternate techniques, but for now, you can just practise the skills by solving beginner Sudoku puzzles.
Here are some tricks that will establish you as a Sudoku master.