The Historical Evolution, Typical Characteristics and Educational Value of Sudoku

Sudoku is a number-filling game and an intellectual sport that exercises logical thinking, enhances observation skills, and cultivates patience and perseverance. The development of Sudoku can be traced back to ancient Chinese "Nine Gridss" and other games, with its prototype being the "Latin Square", and it took shape as the "Number Place" puzzle. The rule system was established in Japan as "Sudoku", and its rapid spread was facilitated by the first Sudoku auto-generation software developed by Gordon Royle. Sudoku has become a widely popular and extensively practiced intellectual sport due to its characteristics such as easy-to-understand rules, readily available materials, difficulty levels, wide participation, mental challenge, and interdisciplinary integration. It holds multiple educational values: repeated attempts during play enhance exploratory skills, emphasis on reasoning improves logical abilities, intense concentration boosts focus, facing challenges builds resilience, and open information processing fosters integrative capabilities.