Sudoku as we know it is actually a relatively new game. The ancestor of sudoku, Latin squares, date back to the middle ages but were formalized in the 1700s. According to the article, “The Science Behind Sudoku,” by Jean-Paul Delahaye, “A Latin square of order n is a matrix of n^2 cells (n cells on a side), filled with n symbols such that the same symbol never appears twice in the same row or column (each of the n symbols is thus used precisely n times). The origin of those grids dates back to the Middle Ages; later, mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) named them Latin squares and studied them.” Essentially, you can look at sudoku one large 9x9 Latin square. From Latin squares came the game called The Number Place. This game was invented in 1979 by a retired architect named Howard Garns. This game was printed in the May 1979 edition of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games under the title of “Number Place.” This game was later published in a Japanese magazine in 1984, and it was here where it earned the name of sudoku, which loosely translates to “single number.” Ironically, English speakers tend to call the game by its Japanese name, Sudoku, while Japanese speakers tend to call the game by its English name, Number Place.