okieshadow
There are many players of Sudoku around the world, but nobody really knows the exact number of them, because there are various Sudoku games in existence - downloadable Sudoku for computers, online Sudoku and many others.
okieshadow
Sudoku is not a math game at all, there is no calculating involved - it is a pure logic game. Sudoku is semantically independent and can be easily understood by players around the world in contrast to good old crosswords which must be adapted for every language. The best part of all is that Sudoku sometimes doesn't even come in numbers, but in pictures, letters or symbols.
okieshadow
Sudoku appeared seemingly out of nowhere and today is incredibly popular in the United States, the UK and many other countries. The original "sudoku" game, however, was called "Number Place," and it first appeared in Dell Magazines' "Dell Pencil Puzzles & Word Games" in 1979.
A retired architect named Howard Garns created the puzzle at the age of 74 (and, sadly, passed away in 1989 before the game experienced its surge in popularity).
Today sudoku puzzles can be found in newspapers, puzzle books, online and in video game form, and range in difficulty from easy to hard. Many variations have also popped up, such as diagonal sudoku, even-odd sudoku and "greater than" sudoku.
