When did Sudoku take off worldwide?
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Published in Daily Trivia
In 1997, retired Hong Kong judge Wayne Gould, 59, a New Zealander, saw a partly completed puzzle in a Japanese bookshop. Over six years he developed a computer program to produce puzzles quickly. Knowing that British newspapers have a long history of publishing crosswords and other puzzles, he promoted Sudoku to The Times in Britain, which launched it on 12 November 2004 (calling it Su Doku). The immense surge in popularity of Sudoku in British newspapers and internationally has led to it being dubbed in the world media in 2005 the "fastest growing puzzle in the world".
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