Humans

How Japan got a fix on brain-teasing highs

Sudoku was the biggest puzzle craze to hit the West from Japan, but as The Puzzle Ninja shows, there are plenty more, including Kakuro, KenKen and O'Ekaki

By Douglas Heaven

29 November 2017

Sudoku puzzle — At the height of the Sudoku craze, everyone was puzzling over them
plainpicture/TOBSN

FOR mathematician and author Alex Bellos, the paper and pencil logic puzzle is “one the most addictive products” known to humans, “a metaphor for life” – and, less hyperbolically, “the most fun you can have with a pencil and paper”. Whether you agree depends on your view of logic puzzles. I don’t much like them. But I do like Bellos’s book, The Puzzle Ninja.

Sudoku is one of Japan’s best known exports. Of the US’s top 50 bestselling books in 2005, six were Sudoku titles. The craze gave people an appetite for more,…