#1980

Nikoli (1980) — The Reader-Grown Puzzle Magazine, and the Road Sudoku Took Around the World

Puzzle Communication Nikoli, launched in 1980, was Japan's first magazine devoted to puzzles. Its name came from a racehorse; the prototype of Sudoku came from America. This essay traces forty years in which Nikoli's mode of production—reader submissions and handmade problems—gave birth to Slitherlink (1989) and Nurikabe (1991), and sent Sudoku around the world via Hong Kong judge Wayne Gould's generator program, rereading the source of a question at the heart of modern puzzle design: who should make a good problem?