ECA - Sudoku Club

·Author: Lydia Chen·

Sudoku Club is proving to be a big success with our students - they are having so much fun! But little do they know that among all this joy and laughter, they are also getting a fantastic mental work out. Before we explain how Sudoku benefits it's participants let's first explain what the game is all about.

The modern game of Sudoku as we recognize it today was invented by Howard Garns, a freelance puzzle inventor from Connellsville, Indiana, USA in 1979. The puzzle was known as “Number Place”, since it involved placing individual numbers into empty spots on a 9 x 9 grid. The square grid  must be filled in with numbers from one to nine with no repeated numbers in each line, horizontally or vertically.

The game first appeared in Japan in 1984 where it was given the name “Sudoku,” which is short for a longer expression in Japanese – “Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru” – which means, “the digits are limited to one occurrence.” Sudoku continues to be highly popular in Japan, where people buy over 600,000 Sudoku magazines per month.

It's also proving to be a big success at GOS. As mentioned previously it's a whole lot if fun but it has many other benefits, here are just a few:

1. Improves concentration. It is impossible to solve a Sudoku puzzle without concentration.

2. Helps to reduce anxiety and stress.

3. Promotes a healthy mindset.

4. Helps kids develop their problem-solving skills.

5. Helps each other make improvement.

So how about that - pretty fantastic don't you think? Why don't you you give it a go?