Suduko first appeared as a game in the 18th century. Almost 200 years passed before it appeared in the media.

In 1979 the first Suduko puzzle was published in an American puzzle magazine called Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games, where it was called “Number Place.”

He then disappeared into obscurity again in the West, appearing occasionally in puzzle magazines. In 1984, Japan’s Monthly Nikolist newspaper published the same kind of puzzle under the name of Suduko. Other magazines picked up on this puzzle craze, but due to copyright reasons they couldn’t name it Suduko.

It was in 1989 that Suduko made its first migration to computers. DigitHunt was published on Commodore 64, bringing Suduko to a whole new audience. In 1995 it appeared on the Apple Macintosh and then in 1996 on the Palm PDA.

In 1997, Wayne Gould, a retired judge from Hong Kong, saw a partially completed puzzle in a Japanese bookstore. He spent the next six years producing a computer program to rapidly produce these puzzles.

Wayne knew that the British loved crosswords and riddles, so he contacted The Times newspaper in London. While imagining, they jumped at the idea and on November 12, 2004 they published it under the name Su Doku. Every issue of The Times since this date has included a Su Doku puzzle.

Su Doku immediately caught the public’s attention, and just three days later, The Daily Mail published the puzzle, but called it a “Code Number.” On January 19, 2005, The Daily Telegraph published his Sudoku game, which was quickly picked up by other newspapers.

On May 20, 2005, Sudoku took an intercontinental leap and was featured in The Daily Telegraph of Sydney. This huge increase in interest has resulted in Sudoko being called “The fastest growing puzzle in the world”.

Despite being Su Doku’s first editors, The Times was caught taking a nap at the Daily Telegraph. While The Times hid the puzzle in the middle of the newspaper, The Telegraph splashed Sudoko on the cover, realizing that he was increasing sales. They took advantage of their market leadership and published the first Sudoku book before the other newspapers realized how popular Sudoku was.

By mid-2005, every newspaper in Britain contained a Sudoku puzzle and there was no way out. Even small local newspapers were catching on to the popularity of the puzzle. Newspapers began to compete with each other, and both The Times and Daily Mail claimed to be the first to present this puzzle.

2005 was truly the year that Sudoku captured the imagination of the British people. Newspapers published more and more Sudoku puzzles, even Teletext got in on the act. And finally, in July 2005, the Sky One satellite channel presented the world’s first live TV Sudoku program.

It was during the promotion of this show that Sky One built a 275-foot (84 m) square puzzle on a hillside near Chipping Sodbury, near Bristol, England. It was next to the M4 motorway and coincided with a major road expansion, which meant that drivers slowed down and could safely see the puzzle. Unfortunately for TV show creators, the puzzle had 1,905 correct solutions, not the usual solution.

Sudoku, like a puzzle, has captured the minds of tens of thousands of people. It’s a puzzle that’s here to stay, but keep in mind that once you choose Sudoku, you may have a hard time putting it down again.