23/05/2005

Sudoku, anyone?

Remember, you've seen it here first!

Well, unless you read The Economist which has an article (by subscription) on this latest attack on literacy originating from Japan of a numbers only and thus globally usable variety of cross word (or rather number) puzzle where you have to fill in numbers 1 to 9 so that they show up just once per row, column & block. The end product looks like this (only red numbers originally provided), and the solving process seems to be highly addictive (via sudoku.com):

4 comments:

Joel said...

Now, I nearly posted about this phenomenon myself but it seems it's already old news in the UK. Almost every newspaper has started carrying an equivalent puzzle in the past couple of weeks, even 'Sunduko', but you might already know that from the Economist article.

The New Zealand Herald (when it reaches this far south) carries one a day. They are pretty addictive and can be surprisingly complex.

Rather than buy from the website, you can always download a problem from the The Times website.

If I am just repeating the Economist's story, sorry!

Joel said...

PS it seems Sudoku is originally an American invention of the late 70s or early 80s...

Chris said...

Interesting! Although I would naturally maintain that it was a Swiss invention by a fellow Basle person (Euler) in the late 18th century ... ;-)

Anonymous said...

Doy you know ?

Le Matin Dimanche presents sudoku today in the july 3rd issue. It will publish a daily grid "Sudoku by Pappocom" since tomorrow in Le Matin (daily newspaper from Lausanne, Switzerland).