In 1979, Howard Garnes, a freelance puzzle constructor, created a straightforward and seemingly unremarkable logic game.
The rules of Number Place, which was first published in Dell Pencil Puzzles & Word Games, were simple: put digits one through nine across the 9x9 grid splattered with seemingly random numbers. Each digit can appear once in each row. The grid is then divided into 3x3 boxes, and each of the nine digits must appear in each box.
Number Place became a regular fixture in Dell Magazine's penny-press puzzle books but Garnes hasn't created a brainteaser for the magazine since the early 1980s. Abby Taylor, editor-in-chief of Dell, predicts Garnes made less than $25 for each puzzle.
She doesn't have any contact information for Garnes. In fact, it took the company several weeks of research just to figure out he was the man responsible for the puzzle.
But as its creator's name has faded into obscurity, Number Place has crept across continents and has come to rival the cryptic crossword as the pre-eminent printed pastime.
The game is now known as the omnipresent Sudoku, a craze that's been picked up by many of Canada's major daily newspapers. The computer-generated conundrums are supplied to 75 newspapers (including The Globe and Mail) in 27 countries.
"There's a universality about it," says Taylor. Though Sudoku involves numbers, it's a logic, rather than a mathematical puzzle. The digits could easily be replaced with colours or symbols and the idea would be the same.
"[The game is]approachable; people look at it and they get hooked because it's not really hard," Taylor adds. "You don't need a large vocabulary."
By the mid-1980s, Nikoli Puzzles in Japan had modified it and created their own version, Sudoku, after seeing Number Place in Dell. Nikoli turned down requests for an interview, since few of its employees are proficient enough in English. But its website says Nikoli improved Number Place by arranging the given numbers symmetrically on the board, creating a pattern.
The first title of the game was Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru, meaning each number must be single (or unmarried). The name of the game was then abbreviated, using su (number) and doku (single).
Nikoli's handmade Sudoku puzzles reigned supreme in Japan for more than a decade. Then in 1997, Wayne Gould, an almost-retired Hong Kong-based judge with an interest in computer programming, ran across a book of the puzzles in a Tokyo bookstore.
Gould ignored the half-completed puzzles at first. But after three months, he put his self-taught programming skills to the test by inventing a computer algorithm that could create a Sudoku.
It took him six years.
"It sounds like an awfully long time, but it was just me working at it with no one to help," Gould says. "[The program]had been purely for my own enjoyment. I retired in 1997. The programming exercise was only for myself but I saw the reaction of my family and friends and so decided to build it up from there."
His wife, Gaye, is now so well-practised that she can complete even the trickiest of puzzles in just over ten minutes.
The Sudoku industry has taken up so much of his life that Gould says he hasn't had time to get back to programming.
He's published four books of Sudoku puzzles -- a trend followed by dozens of other authors and tipsters who have capitalized on the craze, thus spawning a mini-Sudoku publishing boom.
Needless to say, he's put his retirement off.
Gould doesn't earn any royalties from the puzzles newspapers use. Instead, on his website ( http://www.sudoku.com), he sells software that creates original Sudoku puzzles. The program sells for $14.95 (U.S.).
Gould's program could create 6 sextillion original Sudoku puzzles, he says. A proliferation that has left Nikoli -- which expounds the superiority of handcrafted puzzles -- more than a little miffed.
Nobuhiko Kanamoto, Nikoli's editor-in-chief, says the poorly crafted , computer-generated Sudoku will overwhelm solvers and sully the pure joy of the puzzles.
"Computer-generated Sudoku puzzles are lacking a vital ingredient that makes puzzles enjoyable -- the sense of communication between solver and author," Kanamoto says on his website. "Good Sudoku authors are always considering a solver's feelings. Can a computer program do this? Can a computer take account of the way a solver thinks?"
Gould disagreed, saying that there's no perceptible difference between the two.
"I don't blame them for trying," he says, adding the Japanese are rightfully proud of the craftsmanship of their Sudoku. "But a puzzle is a puzzle, and if it's well done, a handmade puzzle is the same as a computer generated one."
The human versus computer debate became a selling point when the Sudoku sensation hit the U.K. late last year. There, Sudoku's popularity hit epic proportions as each paper's puzzle vied against the other in a bid to move newsprint. Before long, all of Britain's major newspapers carried the puzzle. The Times and the Daily Mail both claimed to be at the forefront of the phenomena, while The Guardian said its handcrafted Sudoku created by Nikoli are superior.
Dell Magazine has promised to publish two new magazines devoted solely to Sudoku (of both computer and human origin) in the coming months.
"It really took off in England," Taylor says. "It was the England thing that has brought it to another level."
Sudoku is not the be all and end all of puzzles, she says. Like all such games, its popularity will grow and, in time, wane. But she predicts that Sudoku has at least a few years left.
Since landing in Canada in May, Sudoku has earned a devoted following. Readers have dubbed it the "crack-cocaine" of puzzles.
The Globe's decision to publish Sudoku on page A2, behind vital news stories, has been the source of some tongue-in-cheek marital discomfiture among letter writers. In June, Globe reader Carol Hornick explained that she cuts out the puzzle before her husband sees the paper. If the Globe doesn't move the puzzle she said she fears a divorce.
Derek Nayler, a home renovator from Montreal, spent four hours creating a computer program to "eliminate the drudgery" of finishing a Sudoku.
"To solve a Sudoku puzzle, the first thing is to take each blank space and write what potential numbers could be there," he says.
His program lists all of the possibilities for each square, leaving the solver free to use logic and reasoning to figure which digit goes where.
That, he says, is when the puzzle gets fun. "The drudgery of trying to solve these puzzles is annoying and took away from the fun," Nayler says, adding that his computer program doesn't eliminate the need for solving the puzzle.
But for him and other fans, the thrill of solving a Sudoku is already starting to wear thin. For Dave Morgan, who teaches engineering at a college in Golden, B.C., the puzzle is beginning to grate.
"It's methodical, but not satisfying," he says. "The interest started to wane. Once you run out of logical alternatives you have to guess. That's a brute force solution, not an elegant one."
Clare McFarlane became hooked on the puzzle while in the U.K. She was pleased to find them in Canada when she returned home, but now has become bored with them.
"A year from now, I'd be surprised if The Globe is still running Sudoku," she says.
The cryptic crossword, according to McFarlane, still reigns supreme.