“Godfather of Sudoku” and Japanese puzzle enthusiast Maki Kaji died at the age of 69.
Japanese puzzle enthusiast and publisher Maki Kaji, also known as the “Godfather of Sudoku”, died at the age of 69.
Kaji’s company, Nikoli, said on its website on Monday that he was adored by puzzle lovers around the world and the company would like to express its gratitude to all of them.
Based on a report on Rappler, Kaji’s cause of death was “bile duct cancer”.
Rappler also reported that Kaji took hints from an existing number puzzle in order to create what he later named “sudoku” — a logic puzzle that was a contraction of the Japanese for “every number must be single” sometime in the mid-80s.
Sudoku challenged people to fill a grid of 9X9 blocks, with nine boxes in every block so that all columns, both horizontal and vertical, contained the numbers 1 to 9 without repetition. The number of filled-in figures for a grid at the start of the puzzle determined how difficult it was.
The said puzzle became popular outside Japan around 20 years ago after overseas newspapers started printing it.
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Praised as a way in order to keep mental faculties sharp, over 100 million people around the world were estimated to try the puzzles regularly. According to Rappler, a world championship had been annually held since 2006.
Kaji also continued to create and refine puzzles with the help of readers of his quarterly puzzle magazine. The “Godfather of Sudoku” stepped down as head of his company last July due to his ill health and died last August 10.
In an interview on BBC last 2007, Kaji said that he got really moved when he saw a new idea for a puzzle that had lots of potentials, adding that the secret to inventing a good puzzle was to “make the rules simple”.
“It is like finding treasure. It’s not about whether it will make money, it is purely the excitement of trying to solve it,” Kaji told BBC at that time.
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