Maki Kaji, 'Godfather of Sudoku,' Dies at 69
Source: New York Times
Maki Kaji, a university dropout who turned a numbers game into one of the world’s most popular logic puzzles and became known as the “Godfather of Sudoku,” died at his home in Tokyo on Aug. 10. He was 69. His death was announced on Tuesday by the puzzle company he co-founded, Nikoli. The cause was bile duct cancer, the company said in a statement.
In a speech in 2008, Mr. Kaji said he first “fell in love” with a game called Number Place in 1984. He renamed it Sudoku. “I wanted to create a Japanese name,” Mr. Kaji said. “I created the name in about 25 seconds.” The reason: He had been in a rush to get to a horse race. He said he had not expected the name to stick. (“Sudoku” roughly translates to “single numbers.”) By then, with two childhood friends, he had started the company that would later become Nikoli, which, according to the company, is among the most prolific global publishers of puzzle magazines and books.
The company helped catapult Sudoku into the mainstream in the mid-2000s. It was Japan’s first puzzle magazine, the company said in its statement. The company itself does not create many new puzzles — for example, an American is believed to have invented an earlier version of Sudoku. But the true origins are murky. Some trace the game back to Leonhard Euler, an 18th-century Swiss mathematician. Others say the idea came from China, through India, to the Arab world in the eighth or ninth century.
However the puzzle was created, Mr. Kaji’s company made Sudoku and other similar puzzles popular globally. Nikoli’s secret, he told The New York Times in 2007, was that it largely tested and perfected existing puzzles. “I want to make Nikoli into the world’s source for puzzle games,” he said. “We have a lot more puzzles where Sudoku came from.” In the late 1990s, when he pitched the Sudoku puzzle to publishers in New York and London, he was unsuccessful, he told The Times. But within a decade, the puzzle was being published across hundreds of newspapers globally, generating millions of dollars.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/world/asia/maki-kaji-dead.html
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When I get a Dell crossword puzzles & word/number games magazine, Kakuro is one of the first puzzles I go to work on.
RIP Mr. Kaji and thank you for so many enjoyable puzzles!
My husband and I, along with a third business partner, are in the process of buying out our friend's Sudoku app - Enjoy Sudoku. It comes up as 
Sudoku in the Apple Store and Google Play Store. My husband is an avid player. I just play occasionally. But, as someone who is purchasing a Sudoku app, I owe this gentleman a lot.
...The plane was not full, so you could walk around and do this and that..I had never taken such a long trip before, and
I doubt I will do so again..So Sudoku was the answer. Why? Once you learn the game, there are many levels to play.
And just cause you win one game, that does not mean you will win the next.
I just came back from getting a late lunch/early dinner so in between bites of food, and liquid, guess what I did?...
.Yes, you guessed it, I played Sudoku..Each game is different, and winning the game does take skill and effort.
So, what happens when you lose a game?...That is simple, I write a big X over the one that I lost, and then start another game
...It does keep the mind occupied, and again, if you lose one game, there is always another.
.......(if you come prepared with extra books of more Sudoku games)... Did I really wrote that?
Oh well...........back to the drawing board...
................Oh well, then maybe I'd better hide....
Response to BumRushDaShow (Original post)