The Purple Sky

it is translated into japanese as "Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru".
shortened, it is known as 'sudoku'.

its origin stems from an 18th century swiss's mathematician, by the name of Leonard Euler (not japan, mind u)
he devised the latin square, a square 9 x 9 grid in which all the digits from 1 to 9 appear in every row and column--and never got repeated.
it was 1783 at the time.

it was later re-created in the form of puzzle using the concept of latin lquare, by Howard Garns, a retired american architect, and was known as 'the number syndication'
a Japanese puzzle magazine later adopted the puzzle, and it became a hit there.
last year, sudoku became a regular feature in a newspaper in New York, and the rest, is history.
sudoku captured the world, from the west to the east, and then back to the west spanning 26 years from 1979 to 2005.

and to admit that i only discovered it months ago.
even then, i never had my hands on it myself, until last few weeks (when i heard that my friends are all frenzy abt it..)
the result was...wallaahh..>> i am now officially an addict!!
i wonder where have i been all this while..
if only i came to know u sooner..sob..sob..
(apparently sudoku is currently being published daily in nst and the star, but i was not aware of it before.. =P maybe i saw it but didn't take any notice..screw me for only browsing thru papers but not read them properly these days..)

as for the rule, it is actually simple.. complete the grid so that each row, each grid and each 3x3 square within the puzzle contain the numerals 1-9 with each numerals appearing only once.

this is where i get my daily dose of sudoku..!