What Year Did Sudoku Puzzles Originate?

The history of Sudoku involves a few key milestones rather than a single invention date:

• 1979 – "Number Place": The first recognizable modern Sudoku puzzle was published in the May 1979 issue of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games (USA). It was likely designed by Howard Garns, a freelance puzzle constructor
• 1984 – "Sudoku" Named in Japan: The puzzle was introduced to Japan by Nikoli magazine, where it was named Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru ("the digits must be single"), later abbreviated to Sudoku. Nikoli refined the rules (symmetrical givens, single solution) that define the genre today
• 2004–2005 – Global Explosion: Wayne Gould, a retired Hong Kong judge, developed a computer program to generate puzzles rapidly and convinced The Times (UK) to publish them. The craze spread worldwide almost overnight

Precursors: Latin Squares (studied by Euler in the 18th century) and French newspaper number puzzles from the 1890s share the core constraint of non-repeating digits in rows/columns, but lacked the 3x3 sub-grid (box) constraint that defines Sudoku.

So, while the late 1970s mark the birth of the specific puzzle mechanics, the name "Sudoku" and its standardized form date to 1984.