Puzzle historian, Will Shortz, shared his own diary of events that documents the conception of this very popular puzzle game, Sudoku, its U.S. roots and other counterparts. [Sudoku, a Japanese fill-in-the-grid number puzzle (loose translation: single number), has its modern roots in the U.S.]
* The New York Post and USA Today - U.S. cuckoo for Sudoku - picked it up in 2005 and so then many books followed. (USA)
* Sudoku mania seized the U.K. in 2004. Retired Judge Wayne Gould was smitten with the puzzle during a trip to Japan and then lobbied The Times of London to run it. (UK)
* An editor of Japan’s Nikoli puzzle magazines saw Number Place during a U.S. visit, took it home, renamed it, and set off a craze in 1984. (Japan)
* In 1979, Indianapolis architect Howard Garns created the first puzzle that Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games published as Number Place. (USA)
* Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, invented the Latin Squares in 1783, which was the mathematical basis for the nine-box puzzle. (Switzerland)
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