Did you know that the father of Modern Sudoku was Howard Garns and that he was not Japanese but American? A walk down history says that traces of Sudoku were first seen in Europe and was called ‘Latin Squares'. It later appeared in France just before World War I and then again in the American magazine Dell, which is known to be the earliest form of Modern Sudoku named ‘Number Places'.
The Japanese were the ones who popularised Sudoku however and it was called Sûji wa dokushin ni kagiru initially, which meant “the digits must be single” or “the digits are limited to one occurrence”. This was later abbreviated to ‘Sudoku' taking the ‘Su' (number) from Sûji and ‘doku' (single) from dokushin.
Hot favourite
The city played host to a sudoko competition, put together by The World of Titan, Purasuwalkam, at Gurukul recently. This is the seventh edition of “Sudoku Competition – 2012” for students from Stds. IX to XII.
About 200 vivacious students from various schools registered to participate in their favourite competition. Each four-member team had to solve four Sudokus — Easy, Medium-1, Medium-2 and Hard, within the time limit of an hour to make it to the Trophies. The winners were awarded a watch and a memento each. The ultimate winner received a Rolling Trophy and every participant went back home with a certificate.
S. SHREYANS, S. SOURABH JAIN, J. JITENDER, M. DHANANDRA, GSS Jain Vidyalaya (Winners with 100 points)
We are in seventh heaven. This is our fourth year here and we have been Runners Up for the last three. We split the work and then helped the others. We chose what we wanted to solve according to our expertise. We want to dedicate this victory to our Principal because when we asked him if we could participate, with just a few days left for our board exams, the only thing he told us was “Go win it and come back!”
HARSHITA AGARWAL, SIDDHI CHORDIA, MONIKA K., CATHERIN P., C.S.I. Bain School (1st Runner Up (with 90 points)
We are not as disappointed as our teacher. We are happy we won. We were winners in 2009 and 2010 and Runner Up in 2011. Each of us did one sheet at a time and then checked everything else.
M. TANVEER SHERIFF, SARTHAK MUNSHI, MAHISH KUMAR, ATUL RAMAN, PSBB Millennium School (2nd Runner Up with 80 points)
We are disappointed because we finished first. The Hard level was difficult. We worked out Sudokus before coming here as a part of our practice session for a day. We took a sheet each and once we were done with ours we checked the rest and helped each other.
