The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[Pi]

Most of us are familiar with the story of how Wayne Gould discovered sudoku and then developed the Papocom program to generate them, which was then released as a game.

But i often think to myself, i would do it so differently.

I understand that Wayne spent 6 years developing the software to get it to the quality that it is, preparing for the immense excitement that followed the launch.

I think that i would be tempted to knock something up in VB and just get it in print as soon as possible, concentrating on the newspaper and book market.

And i wonder. Would anyone mind?

If i did it my way we may well have inferior puzzles but would people notice?
I wouldnt be able to make the sophisticated game but we would still have the papers and books
I wouldnt make as much money as (I guess) Wayne has, but that would only be my loss.

So..If it had been me who bought the sudoku book in the Japanese shop and brought it back to Britain would anyone notice the difference, and what does this say about me, am i a less maticulous person than Wayne? more hurried? or am i short sighted?

[ab]

...
I think that i would be tempted to knock something up in VB and just get it in print as soon as possible, concentrating on the newspaper and book market.

And i wonder. Would anyone mind?

If i did it my way we may well have inferior puzzles but would people notice?
I wouldnt be able to make the sophisticated game but we would still have the papers and books
...
So..If it had been me who bought the sudoku book in the Japanese shop and brought it back to Britain would anyone notice the difference, and what does this say about me, am i a less maticulous person than Wayne? more hurried? or am i short sighted?

Given the quality of most of the sudoku puzzles in newspapers and puzzle book I don't think anyone would have noticed the difference. Most can be solved with singles.

A friend of mine said that solving sudoku was 'like putting the shopping away' for her.

On the flipside, if most newspapers carried superior, superior plus and harder sudokus it wouldn't be half as popular as it is. Even the Times puzzle books don't have very hard sudoku in them!

Also the history actually goes back to Dell computer's number place puzzles. Apparently they did churn out fairly straightforward puzzles and sudoku didn't take off in the US until it was reimported via Japan and the UK.