My earliest memories involve watching my mother and grandmother engrossed in sudoku puzzles. It’s surprising to think that the term sudoku only made its way into the English language in the year 2000, just before I was born. Equally surprising is the fact that the game was not actually invented in Japan, but by an American architect named Howard Garns. He initially named it Number Place and featured it in the magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games. Although Number Place gained some popularity in the United States, it truly took off in Japan in the mid-1980s, thanks in large part to the Nikoli puzzle company. They coined the term sudoku as an abbreviation of the phrase suji wa dokushin ni kagiru, which translates to “numbers are restricted to being alone”. The game eventually made its way back to the Western world when the London Times began publishing it in 2004, leading to its widespread popularity.
