Math Games:Sudoku Variations: "Who made this puzzle? In addition to being the crossword editor of the New York Times, Will Shortz is a puzzle historian, so he did detective work to find the answer. He knew that 'Number Place' puzzles had appeared in Dell Magazines, and went through his collection to find the first. Dell listed no author, but the name Howard Garns always appeared in the contributor's list of any issue containing a 'Number Place' puzzle. Also, Garns' name did not appear in any issue lacking a Number Place, which clinched the identification. Further research revealed that Howard Garns to be a retired architect who created the puzzle at age 74. Howard Garns died in Indianapolis in 1989, and never got a chance to see his creation as a worldwide phenomenon. (Shortz, pers. comm. 2005)
Howard Garns made many Number Place puzzles for Dell, quickly simplifying the rules to those used today -- Fill in the grid so that every row, column, and 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. In April 1984, Japan's puzzle group Nikoli discovered Dell�s Number Place presented it for a Japanese audience in the pages of puzzle paper Monthly Nikolist. Originally named Suuji Wa Dokushin Ni Kagiru, ('the numbers must be single') the puzzle became very popular. Kaji Maki, the president of Nikoli, abbreviated it to Sudoku - (Su = number, Doku = single), and trademarked the name. As the popular grew, competing companies stayed with the non-trademarked name Number Place, or 'nanpure'. Even today, many Japanese puzzle magazines spell out 'Number Place' in English. In the United States and elsewhere, it's called Sudoku ('single number' in Japanese). Thus, japanese-speakers use the English, and english-speakers use the Japanese. Here are two particularly nice Sudoku puzzles under the normal rules. "
