A Short History of Sudoku — From 18th Century to NYT App

The mathematical roots

The 9×9 grid puzzle traces back to Latin squares, an n×n array where each row and column contains each symbol exactly once. Leonhard Euler formalized them in 1782, though similar arrangements appeared in earlier folk puzzles.

The American invention (1979)

Howard Garns, a retired architect from Indianapolis, created the modern version under the name "Number Place" for Dell Magazines in 1979. It used a Latin square with the 3×3 box constraint added.

Japan picks it up (1984)

Japanese puzzle publisher Nikoli reprinted Number Place in 1984, renaming it Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru ("the numbers must occur only once") — shortened to Sudoku. Nikoli refined the visual style and added the requirement of symmetric clue placement.

Global takeover (2004)

The Times of London published its first Sudoku in November 2004 thanks to Wayne Gould, a retired judge who had become obsessed with Japanese Sudoku and built a software puzzle generator. Within months, every major UK and US newspaper had a daily Sudoku.

The digital era

The NYT Sudoku app, Sudoku.com mobile apps, and countless browser implementations now reach hundreds of millions of players monthly. The format has not changed since 1984.