The man who glued so many of us with the numerical game of ‘Sudoku’, Maki Kaji passed away at the age of 69. Maki Kaji, who has been widely called as the ‘Godfather of Sudoko’ for he popularised the number puzzle died of bile duct cancer. He was the President of the puzzle company Nikoli Co. till July and passed away on August 10 at his hometown Mitaka.
Kaji was known as the ‘Godfather of Sudoku’ which derived its name from Japanese words ‘numbers’ and ‘single’ where players placed the number 1 through 9 in rows and columns, without repeating any numbers. The game garnered huge publicity in the year 2004 and became a global hit. Sudoku was originally called as “Suji-wa-Dokushin-ni-Kagiru,” which means “Numbers should be single, a bachelor.”
The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984 as Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る), which can be translated as “the digits must be single”, or as “the digits are limited to one occurrence” (In Japanese, dokushin means an “unmarried person”). At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku (数独) by Maki Kaji!
The man travelled to almost 30 countries with his game and creating a mark of its own. Many had Sudoku championships with over 200 million people winning in 100 countries over this period of time.
(The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Aug 17, 2021 02:24 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).
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