Extreme Su Doku - The Ultimate Challenge!

Times Magazine named Wayne Gould as one of the 100 people who shaped the world in 2005. Why? Su Doku. Without him Su Doku would be unknown outside Japan and not a world-wide phenomenon whose popularity is such that the word is now a dictionary entry.

Now comes the ultimate challenge with 200 super-fiendish puzzles... Extreme Su Doku.

Widely recognised as the leading authority on Su Doku, Wayne Gould stumbled on it by chance. On a week’s holiday in Tokyo he saw a book of Su Doku puzzles in a shop and while he doesn’t understand Japanese felt it was the kind of thing that might interest him. Intrigued by the concept, and without any formal education in programming, he created a computer programme that automatically generates Su Doku puzzles (previously constructing a Su Doku puzzle would have taken hours and hours).

“The original idea was to ensure that I myself would never run out of Su Doku puzzles and then I realised that other people might enjoy it too”. Wayne began to supply puzzles to papers around the world including The Times in the UK and the rest is history.

Wayne’s explanation for the popularity of Su Doku is “Su Doku is language-independent so it is able to sweep across language barriers. Su Doku tests how you think, not (as crosswords do) what you know. In this way it is a ‘democratic’ puzzle that levels the playing field.” In Su Doku everyone has an equal chance and your nationality, your education level or your occupation don’t matter.

Wayne Gould retired as Chief District Judge from the Hong Kong judiciary in 1997 and currently supplies 600 papers in 66 countries with Su Doku puzzles. He divides his time between Hong Kong, the US and New Zealand.

For the uninitiated there is only one rule to Su Doku: you fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column and 3 x 3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered.

Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

EXTREME SU DOKU (Book 1)
Wayne Gould
Collins
10th September
£6.99 paperback