Do You Know What The Three Basic Sudoku Rules Are?
Sudoku is a game of the mind. Like chess it challenges, prods and encourages you to push yourself to your limits intellectually. Many people find this very attractive and that is why Sudoku today is such a popular game the world over.
A Brief History
Many say that Sudoku is a number game that originated in Japan. It is true that in the year 1984 (April) a monthly newspaper published in Japan by the name of Nikoli brought out the first Sudoku game, which was baptized at that time, "Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru". Later, it was shortened to what you know as "Sudoku" by Kaji Maki who was then the President of the newspaper.
Few however know that the Sudoku game was in fact first published not in Japan, but in USA by Dell Magazine. At that time this was called, "Number Place". The father of Sudoku seems to be Howard Garnes who was inspired to come up with these puzzles by the Latin Squares or Magic squares.
The Latin Squares were the result of the work of a Swiss mathematician known as Leonhard Euler as early as 1783 who was fascinated by the magic squares of Chinese origin.
The Three Sudoku Rules
When you play Sudoku you will have a grid of nine rows and nine columns which is made out of smaller grids of three into three rows and columns. The three Sudoku rules that you should keep in mind are very simple to remember. The first is that the numbers 1 to 9 should appear only once in each column; the second is that these numbers (1-9) should appear only once in each row; and lastly the third one of the three Sudoku rules is that the numbers 1 to 9 should appear only once in each of the three by three grid.
There are two more Sudoku rules that were added later to the game by the Japanese newspaper, Nikoli. One says that the Sudoku puzzles should never have more than 32 clues to help in solving it; and the other says that each one of the puzzle should be symmetrical.
People seem to love the mind challenge Sudoku offers even more than the famously addictive Rubic cube. Its popularity among the masses worldwide forced programmers bring it on the computers and when it came out in the form of a computer program there were no more brakes to slow down the popularity and fame of this excellent mind game. As soon as the program hit the stores, it was an instant sell-out and as you can see from the numbers in sales its popularity is still growing.
Now, as long as you like the game and remember the three basic Sudoku rules you can enjoy playing this game for as long as you like.
