How Maki Kaji created Sudoku as we know it today
On August 10, 2021, Japanese puzzle magazine Nikoli told the world that its founder Maki Kaji was dead. This 69-year-old man had died of bile duct cancer in his home at Tokyo, the capital of Japan. While Nikoli is an important magazine for Japanese game enthusiasts, Kaji is known all over the world for his most famous puzzle, the Sudoku.
Maki Kaji was born in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo in 1951. After dropping out of Keio University, he decided to start a magazine, because he really wanted to be in the publication business. So he set up the puzzle magazine Nikoli, which published its first edition in August 1980. Interestingly, ‘Nikoli’ was also the name of a horse who won a race. Kaji’s fondness of watching horse races remained till the end.
What is Sudoku and how was it made?
The idea of the game originated centuries ago either in China or India as a puzzle where numbers have to be lined up without repeats. Apparently this idea then travelled to Arabia and was popularised by 18th century Swiss mathematician Euler. La France, a French newspaper, carried a puzzle called Evil Magic Square in July 1895, very similar to the game we have now. But what caught Kaji’s eye in 1984 was a puzzle called Number Place by US architect Howard Garns. Kaji liked it immediately, he found it very interesting to solve. But he did not like the name and also wanted to make certain changes, so he made notes on these. He re-worked and re-designed the game accordingly, and published it in Nikoli. That was how Sudoku, as we know it today, was born. It gained popularity first in Japan, and then became famous when newspapers all over the world started publishing it as a daily puzzle.
How did Sudoku get its name?
Maki Kaji was fond of watching horse races. While thinking of a good name for his redesigned puzzle, he went to watch a race. The Japanese for ‘numbers must be single’ (Sudoku’s main rule) is ‘Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru’. While watching the race, Kaji got the idea of shortening this phrase to Su-do-ku, and everyone in his magazine also liked the name.