Contrary to what many people believe Sudoku was not invented in Japan although the name Sudoku has indeed been coined there. The real inventor of Sudoku was a Swiss mathematician named Leonhard Euler. In 1783 he devised Latin Squares, a new kind of Magic Squares. Leonhard Euler made a grid in which every number or symbol appears once in each row or column.

In the late 1970's Sudokus were first published in Dell magazines. Dell applied the Latin Square concept to a 9x9 grid with the addition of 3x3 boxes. Each box contained the numbers 1 to 9.

A leading Japanese puzzle company introduced Dell's version of the game and presented it to their fans. They called the game Suuji Wa Dokushin Ni Kagiru (the numbers must occur only once). Kaji Maki, the president of Nikoli, shortened the name to Sudoku (Su = number; Doku = single).

After some improvements were added to the game in 1986, Sudokus became one of the best selling puzzles in Japan.

Today, more than 600,000 copies of Sudoku magazines are sold every month in Japan alone.

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