数独
Sudoku
| 9 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 7 |
| 7 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 9 | 1 |
| 1 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 3 | 8 | 2 |
| 2 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 8 |
| 8 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 9 |
| 4 | 3 | 1 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 2 | 5 | 6 |
| 6 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 5 |
| 5 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 7 | 9 | 1 | 3 |
| 3 | 9 | 2 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 7 | 4 |
An example of a sudoku puzzle. Just for fun, I've made a sudoku solver tool that you can use to solve puzzles like this.
No, I haven't been asked to translate anything associated with sudoku, but since the word seems to be in the news a lot these days, I thought I'd explain what it means and how to pronounce it.
In case you're unfamiliar with the word, sudoku is the latest puzzle craze sweeping the UK. It involves placing numbers into a 9×9 grid so that every row, column and 3×3 block contains all the numbers 1 to 9 once only. For example, consider the first three columns of the grid shown here. The number 1 appears in the first column of the 3×3 block at the top, and in the second column of the 3×3 block at the bottom. We know the number 1 must also appear in the middle 3×3 block, and we also know that no number can appear twice in the same column of the grid. Therefore the number 1 must appear below the 9 and the 5 in the middle 3×3 block.
The word "sudoku" is actually an abbreviation of the phrase suji wa dokushin ni kagiru — or "Only single numbers allowed" — which was the title of the puzzle when it appeared in a Japanese puzzle magazine in 1984. ("Su" means "number" and "doku" means "single".) It is pronounced like the English words "Sue Dock" with a short "oo" sound tagged on to the end of "Dock" (half as long as the "oo" sound in "Sue"). These puzzles are also referred to as "number place" or "nam-pure" (rhymes with "crème brûlée").
Just for fun, I've made a sudoku puzzle solver tool which you're welcome to try out.
Also in the portfolio
- "Playstation" symbols: Those symbols on your Playstation controller might actually mean something…
- A Question of Sport: A small typesetting job for a popular British TV programme
- Word puzzle: A rather strange word puzzle that appeared in (of all places) a research paper on the design of semiconductor materials
- Bilingual song sheet: A bilingual (English and Japanese) song sheet I produced for a wedding service in the UK