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Sudoku is a great skill building game originating from Japan. Millions of people around the world play Sudoku everyday and it's said that once the bug gets you, you're hooked for life!
Sudoku is not exactly a mathematics game, but most of us are using them in our classrooms anyway! Sudoku is a logic game and logic skills are very welcome to math teachers and students!
There are quite some variations in the Sudoku layouts, but we feel that the simple 9 by 9 game is the most effective! For beginning players, or young kids, we would advice the easier 4 by 4 or 6 by 6 variations! Some people even play 16 by 16 games, but these are too difficult for most of us (they are for me!).
The rules are actually very easy. Let's keep the 9 by 9 Sudoku in mind. The numbers 1 to 9 (it's a 9 by 9 game) must be filled in each row, column and box. This box will be a 3 by 3 box in the 9 by 9 variation of Sudoku! Each number can and must be filled in only once! The normal 9 by 9 version looks like follows:
Each puzzle will already have numbers filled in depending on the difficulty level. The more numbers already filled in, the easier most likely. Sudoku puzzles are often divided into categories such as very easy, easy, medium, hard and very hard. Some publishers use the star system; 1 star stands for very easy and 5 stars for very hard.
There's a lot of discussion going on online about one very important strategy of the game! Don't ever, we really mean ever ever guess! If you start guessing you will end up with doubles in your rows, columns and boxes. Think logically what is possible and especially what is not possible!
