Sudoku (すうどく, Sūdoku) is a logic game that uses pen and paper to perform calculations.

Players need to deduce the numbers of all the remaining spaces according to the known numbers on the 9×9 board, and meet the requirements of each row, each column, and each thick line of the numbers in the palace contain 1-9, and do not repeat.

The Sudoku board is a nine-house board, and each house is divided into nine sub-squares. In these 81 grids, certain known numbers and solution conditions are given, and the numbers from 1 to 9 are filled in the other spaces by using logic and reasoning.

Make each number from 1 to 9 appear only once in each row, column and house, so it is also called

"Nine-square grid". Sudoku originated from the Latin Square studied by Swiss mathematician Euler and others in the early 18th century.

In the 80s of the 19th century, a retired American architect Hoard Garns invented a puzzle game based on this Latin square, which was the prototype of Sudoku.

In the 70s of the 20th century, people discovered this game in a puzzle magazine "MathPuzzlesandLogicProblems" in New York, USA, and it was called NumberPlace at that time, which is also the earliest newspaper version of Sudoku that is currently recognized.

In 1984, a Japanese scholar introduced it to Japan and published it in a game magazine of Nikoli Corporation, "パズル Communication ニコリ", which was named at the time

"Suujiadokushinnikagiru", later felt that the name was too long, so it was renamed

"sudoku", where

"su" means number,

"doku" means a single word. This name is also a more common name for Sudoku in the world.

Later, a former New Zealand judge of the High Court of Hong Kong, ayne Gould, stumbled upon it while traveling to Tokyo, Japan, in March 1997.

He first published it in the British newspaper The Times, and soon other newspapers followed, and soon became popular all over the United Kingdom, after which he spent 6 years writing a computer program and putting it on the website (this website is also known as the Sudoku player forum), and then for some reason, the website was shut down, but thanks to the data recovered by Sudoku master Glenn Foler, the player forum has a new location.

In the 90s, some educational books began to be published in China, Nanhai Publishing House published "Sudoku 1-2" in 2005, and then "Sudoku Challenge" by the famous Japanese Sudoku maker Tetsuya Nishio was also published by Liaoning Education Publishing House.

"Beijing Evening News", "Yangtze Evening News", "Yangcheng Evening News", "Xinmin Evening News", "Chengdu Business Daily" and other newspapers and media have also published Sudoku games.

Reference link: Sudoku (logic game)_Baidu Encyclopedia