Sudoku Puzzle Secrets

Have you heard of the Sudoku yet? If you haven’t you must be living under a stone! If you have, then you are in good company! Millions of people from all around the globe are hooked on this simple but sometimes complex puzzle.Sudoku is a logic puzzle disguised as a numbers game, and it has taken the entire world by storm. With a name like Sudoku you would think that it originated in Japan, but Sudoku has been popular in the United States and the UK for many years. The Japanese found an example under the name ‘Number Place’ in an American magazine and translated it as ‘su’, meaning number, and doku, meaning a single unit. It immediately took off in a country where number games are more prevalent than word games. Crosswords don’t work too well in Japanese.

Sudoku is based on a 9×9 grid, although there are many variations on this. The grid has series of numbers, which are placed in each row and column in random order; these are called “givens”. The general concept of solving the puzzle is quite simple. You need to fill all of the cells with one number. Every row, column and region will contain the numbers from 1 to 9 only one time. This means that each number will only occur once in all three directions.

The reason that Sudoku is so popular is that although the underlying principals of the game are simple, the reasoning behind the solution can often be very difficult. Puzzles are usually ranked according to difficulty and sometimes by the estimated time it should take to solve them. Usually the more “givens” you have, the easier the puzzle will be. The bottom line to solving a Sudoku depends on how easy it is to determine the logical order of the numbers.

The complexity of Sudoku puzzles can be adapted to suit all levels and ages and they are a great way of exercising the brain and developing logical reasoning. The time taken to solve a puzzle can vary from five minutes for an easy one, to several hours for a complex puzzle. But beware! Sudoku can be very addictive and once you start I guarantee you will find it very difficult to stop.

The growth of this worldwide trend has been partly fuelled by the big prizes on offer at various Sudoku events and tournaments throughout the world; but I still think that the main reason is because it is so addictive. One thing that’s for certain, this is a craze that is here to stay.