Dave Kellam

People seem to be searching for information related to the puzzle game called Sodoku, so here we go. The game (officially known as Sudoku) was first popularised by Japan in 1986, but in the past few months it’s been appearing in many newspapers around the globe. The Sodoku surge is primarily the responsibility of Wayne Gould, who wrote a computer program that allows for the easy creation of puzzle boards.

The puzzle itself is relatively simple; the common format consists of a 9×9 grid, that’s further sub-divided into nine 3×3 grids. The object is to fill each column, row and 3×3 grid with the numbers one through nine (other characters or symbols can be used) without any repeats. The game’s difficulty lies in the initial board configuration — both the quantity and frequency of the given numbers. True Sodoku puzzles have only one unique solution per puzzle.

Further Links & Reading:

• Sudoku.com – official website of Wayne Gould, populariser of the game
• Wikipedia Entry – has pretty much anything you want to know about the game
• Frazer Jarvis’s page – contains info on the enumeration of Sodoku grids
• Sodoku Grandmaster – a Sodoku humour site
• Puzzles Online – list of online puzzles
• Dashboard Widget – play sodoku on your mac
• Websodoku – play online
• Sodoku.org.uk – fairly comprehensive Sodoku site

That’s about it for now. The next thing up will be cryptic crosswords — I’ve been figuring out how to do them over the last week or two. Alanah, Will and I managed to finish off the Globe’s Canada Day cryptic puzzle (it was a little on the intense side of things).

Updates:

• CNN article on Sudoku – September 19th, 2005
• The Times has an extensive Sudoku section – November 5th, 2005

I’m heading up to Will’s cottage for a couple days, I’ll probably be back Tuesday night, so there likely won’t be any updates around here for a few days. Hopefully you can find something else to occupy your time. If you can’t, spend some time on the July Contest. There should be pictures when I get back, the camera still kind of works, it just doesn’t have the lcd anymore.