Where Sudoku Came From

ficklestudio26 · Facts checked October 15, 2026

Sudoku has a Japanese name, but the puzzle did not start in Japan. Here is the short version of how it got its grid, its name and its fame.

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An American puzzle called Number Place

The modern puzzle first appeared in 1979 in a Dell Magazines puzzle book under the name Number Place. It is most likely the work of Howard Garns, a retired architect from Connersville, Indiana, who was in his seventies. The credit was not clear for a long time. Puzzle editor Will Shortz traced Garns's authorship in 2005 through Dell's contributor records. Garns had died in 1989.

A name from Japan

The Japanese puzzle publisher Nikoli introduced the puzzle in April 1984 in its magazine, under a long Japanese title. Nikoli's president Maki Kaji later shortened the title to "sudoku", and that is the name that stuck. Nikoli also helped popularize the style of hand-designed puzzles in Japan.

The 2004 and 2005 boom

In September 2004, the Conway Daily Sun in New Hampshire became the first newspaper outside Japan to publish one, using a puzzle by Wayne Gould. On November 12, 2004, The Times of London began printing it as "Su Doku". Within about two years almost every major US newspaper ran a daily sudoku. That is how a number puzzle from a US magazine, renamed in Japan, ended up in newspapers around the world.

The math in the grid

A finished sudoku grid is a special kind of Latin square, a grid in which each symbol appears once in every row and column. Sudoku adds one more rule: each of the nine 3×3 boxes must also hold every digit once. A well-made puzzle has exactly one solution, so you never have to guess. The puzzles on this site are generated that way and checked for a single solution.