SDOU CHALLENGE
Welcome to the Sudoku
challenge! This ancient puzzle has been baffling and entertaining people all
over the world for over 30 years, although its first concepts date back to
Islamic literature at the end of the ninth century, and was originally called
"Magic Squares." It is also known to be connected to the concept of
Latin Squares. The objective is to fill in the grid so that every row, every
column, and every 3x3 box contain the digits 1 through 9. Sound easy? Give it a
try! There's no math involved. The grid has numbers, but nothing has to add up
to anything else. You solve the puzzle with reasoning and logic. It's fun, it's
challenging, and it's addictive!
Don’t forget to record your time!
Puzzle crazed fans of Sudoku
have become target for many electronic, and handheld game corporations,
including Nintendo, Playstation, and hand-held game
giant, Tiger.
It has become a hard-to-kick habit for many people wordwide, The Sudoku bug is
spreading at light speed around the globe, and the only anecdote seems to the
be the act of solving the puzzle! So you think you've got what it takes?
Click here to check out the World Sudoku Championships!
Click
here to find out about the new WORLD champion!
It is difficult to pinpoint the
exact time and place in which the original concept of Sudoku
began, but it seems to be related to the appearance of the first "Magic
Squares." The Jabirean Corpus (a group of
writings attributed to Jabir ibn
Hayyan, also known in Europe as 'Geber'),
suggested Magic Squares as charms for easing childbirth. These squares
consisted of nine cells with the numbers 1 to 9 arranged with 5 in the center
so that the contents of each row, column and the two diagonals added up to 15.
This particular square became known as the buduh
square.
By that time, the Magic Square concept became
so popular that the name 'buduh' itself was assigned
talismanic properties. In subsequent years, Islamic writers developed a variety
of methods for forming larger Magic Squares, in which no numeral was repeated
and the sums of each row and each column and the two diagonals were the same.
Magic Squares with cells 4x4 or 6x6 or 7x7 were particularly popular, with
10x10 squares being produced by the 13th century. In fact, Sudoku
puzzles are actually a special case of Latin Squares, (a square matrix of rows
and columns; cells contain different symbols arranged so that no symbol occurs
more than once in any row or column); any solution to a Sudoku
puzzle is a Latin square. Sudoku imposes the
additional restriction that 3×3 subgroups must also contain the digits 1–9. For
most of us, this sounds like a very confusing order, but not to worry, a series
of books have been written specifically to ease our troubles along the hard
road of Sudoku.
This particular type of puzzle as we know it
was first published in the late 1970’s in 'Math Puzzles and Logic Problems'
magazine by Dell Magazines. The name given by Dell to these puzzles was
"Number Place," as they are still called by this company today. Dell
took the Latin Square concept and applied it to a 9x9 grid with the addition of
nine 3x3 sub-grids, or boxes, each containing all numbers from 1 to 9. So, the Sudoku concept was not invented in Japan as many people may
believe, but the name Sudoku was. In 1984 Nikoli, Japan’s leading puzzle creating company, discovered
Dell’s Number Place and decided to present them to their Japanese puzzle fans.
The puzzles, which were first named "Suuji Wa Dokushin Ni Kagiru," ("the numbers must be single" or
"the numbers must occur only once") quickly became popular. Many
techniques have also been formulated to help in solving the puzzle, such as the
"bordering" technique shown below.
Today, Sudoku
can be found in almost any gas station, Target, Wal-Mart, and other similar
department stores. It has indeed become a force to be reckoned with, and an
obsession that is not easily overcome. For instance, Sudoku
began its gentle attack in England last year, and versions can now be found in
four national newspapers. Addicts are as obsessed as 1980s teenagers fixated on
the Rubik's Cube. So if you ever seek to set your restless mind at ease, don't
go looking for trouble in the restless world of Sudoku!
But if you're up for a challenge, not easily frustrated, and wish to strengthen
your mental capacity, Sudoku is the puzzle for you!
+
