The recent Sudoku craze began in late 2004 when Wayne Gould convinced The Times of London to take a chance on a puzzle that had been invented (anonymously) by Howard Garns in 1979 and published by Dell magazines as Number Place. Gould, a retired judge and computer programmer, had written software for the game. His software and some basic information on the game is available at his website sudoku.com.

Sudoku is a special-case 9×9 Latin Square, where no number in a matrix, or grid of numbers, is repeated in either a row or column. The special case is that in sudoku no number can appear more than once in each of the nine 3×3 sub-grids.
In Japan sudoku is called number place.
With the popularity of the number game Sudoku comes a wealth of resources for players of all levels. Listed here is a partial list of the growing number of Sudoku websites.

On the Computer

The web offers up several good options for playing sudoku online. The best so far is arguably Iron Sudoku, but MiniClip Sudoku, Funbrain Sudoku, Daily SuDoku, dkm sudoku, WebSudoku, and sudoku.com.au are also nice.

Besides online play, there are truckloads of sudoku programs for the PC, plenty for the Mac, and several for Linux.

For the PC there’s Gould’s sudoku, SudokuWorks, Desktop Sudoku, Sudoku PC, Zen Sudoku, Sudoku Susser, MPS-Sudoku, GameHouse Sudoku, and others. You can order Classic Sudoku, Sudoku Puzzle Addict, or Sapphire Sudoku.

On the Mac there’s a Sudoku Dashboard Widget, Sudoku Susser, MacSudoku, GameHouse Sudoku, UniSudoku, and others.

For Linux there’s SuDoku freeware, Sudoku Susser, Gnome Sudoku, and others.

On your Cellphone

By all means, put sudoku on your phone. There’s sudoku for Symbian OS phones, Cellufun Sudoku, and SudokuPuzz’s Mobile Sudoku.

Handheld Game Systems

You can get sudoku on your Sony PSP with Go! Sudoku, Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku, Homebrew Sudoku for PSP, or (in Japanese) Nanpure for Sony PSP.

If you have a Nintendo DS, you can get Sudoku Gridmaster, Dr. Sudoku or Sudoku Mania. Of course Brain Age includes sudoku.

GameBoy Advance owners can get Sudoku Fever.

PDAs

For Palm Pilots, there’s Sudoku Deluxe.

Background

Sudoku article at Wolfram MathWorld
WikiPedia article on Sudoku

Books

Mammoth Book of Sudoku: 400 New Puzzles
Sudoku Easy to Hard Presented by Will Shortz, Volume 2
Sudoku Easy Presented by Will Shortz Volume 1
New York Post Sudoku 1: The Official Utterly Addictive Number-Placing Puzzle
New York Post Difficult Sudoku: The Official Utterly Adictive Number-Placing Puzzle
Master Sudoku: Step-by-Step Instructions for Players at All Levels
Grand Master Ultimate Sudoku

Other resources

Sudoku at Open Directory
Sudoku Variations
Sudoku.org.uk
Scanraid Sudoku

Tags: Flash · Nintendo DS · PC · Platforms · PSP · Puzzles