![]() ![]() ![]() We seem to like this kind of practical logic when it is applied to the solving of mysteries of all kinds, from detective stories to Sudoku. And, perhaps, it is the use of such logical strategies that gives Sudoku its appeal. Of course, trial-and-error, hypothesis-testing, and the process of elimination all come up in the process of deducing number placement through exclusion and inclusion. Sometimes, both are involved in tandem ("When considered together with another number, this number can only occur here."). There seem to be two basic logical processes involved, as far as I can see: (1) exclusion ("This number cannot go here because."), (2) inclusion ("This is the only number that can go here because."). (Scroll down for answer.) The solution involves logical thinking-deducing where numbers can or cannot be placed. If someone has never done a Sudoku puzzle, then he or she might find it hard on the other hand, someone familiar with the puzzle genre might find it too easy. The one below is moderate in difficulty, in my estimation, although determining difficulty level might be more a matter of familiarity with the puzzle than anything else. Maybe readers of this blog can write to me about it, if they know something concrete. But I can't quite get a firm grasp on the criteria that mark difficulty levels. However, in having constructed many of these myself, there seems to be much more to it than that. How is the level of difficulty determined? I am not sure, really, although the implicit principle seems to be that that the fewer the initial clues given, the harder it is to solve the puzzle. The puzzle-maker provides some of the numbers in the layout, and these are the initial clues to be used in solving the puzzle. The challenge is to fill the layout with the digits from 1 through 9, so that every row, every column, and every three-by-three box contains these digits, without repeating-that is, once and only once. In its usual form, it is made up of a nine-by-nine grid, with heavy lines dividing it into nine three-by-three boxes. Sudoku is a simple puzzle with no tricks or twists built into it. Whatever the case, Garns' number placement puzzle is now considered to be the blueprint for modern-day Sudoku. It is unclear whether Garns was familiar with either Euler's puzzle or the prototype puzzles carried by the French newspapers in the late nineteenth century. Sudoku, I mentioned to the reporter, seems to simply expand upon Euler's invention. A Latin square is a square arrangement of digits placed in such a way that no digit appears twice in the same row or column. After being told by the AP reporter what Sudoku was all about, I pointed out to her that the idea can probably be traced back to magic squares or to "Latin Squares," invented by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783). Magic squares are number placement puzzles, but are solved by considering the actual value of a number since, in a magic square, the rows, columns, and diagonals must all add up to the same total (known as the magic constant). And, of course, there are magic squares, which go back to ancient times in China. These were not really Sudoku yet, since they could be solved in more than one way. By early 2005, Sudoku became a craze in Britain, quickly spreading throughout the globe from there, joining crosswords as a permanent feature of puzzle pages in newspapers.įor the sake of historical accuracy, it should be mentioned that number placement puzzles started appearing in newspapers in the latter part of the nineteenth century in Europe, and especially in France. A few months later Sudoku puzzles started appearing in The Times of London. These appeared in 2004 in the Conway Daily Sun of New Hampshire. In 1997, a retired judge from New Zealand, named Wayne Gould, saw a Sudoku puzzle and started making his own. Within a year, major Japanese dailies were carrying the increasingly popular puzzle. In 1984, an editor for Nikoli magazines in Japan came across one of the puzzles, changed its name to Sudoku (meaning "only single numbers allowed") and included it in his magazines. By the way, the late architect Howard Garns is pegged as being its inventor. It went virtually unnoticed, except by readers of the magazine. ![]() Despite its Japanese name, the concept behind Sudoku crystallized in the United States in the form of "Numbers in Place," which appeared for the first time in the May 1979 issue of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Crossword Games magazine. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |