f the First World War.[15]According to Will Shortz, the modern Sudoku was most likely designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor from Indiana, and first published in 1979 by Dell Magazines as Number Place (the earliest known examples of modern Sudoku). Garns's name was always present on the list of contributors in issues of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games that included Number Place, and was always absent from issues that did not.[5] He died in 1989 before getting a chance to see his creation as a worldwide phenomenon.[5] It is unclear if Garns was familiar with any of the French newspapers listed above.The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984[5] as Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る?), which can be translated as "the digits must be single" or "the digits are limited to one occurrence." At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku by Maki Kaji (鍜治 真起, Kaji Maki?), t