Maki Kaji first fell in love with a game that involved filling in a numbered grid in 1984. The story goes that, in a rush to get to a horse race, he decided on a name in about 25 seconds. He settled on Sudoku, which roughly translates to “single numbers.” The game went on to become one of the world’s most popular logic puzzles. According to Nikoli, the puzzle company he co-founded, an estimated 200 million people in 100 countries have solved Sudoku. Puzzle experts said Kaji had imbued their world with “soul.”Have an inventive evening.

Source: International New York Times August 17, 2021 21:56 UTC