Maki Kaji, known as the Godfather of Sudoku, died at his home in Tokyo on August 10 at the age of 69, according to New York Times. He was a university dropout who turned a numbers game into one of the world’s most popular logic puzzles.
His puzzle company Nikoli confirmed his death on Tuesday and stated that he died due to bile duct cancer.
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In 2008, Kaji said he first “fell in love” with a game called Number Place in 1984 and later renamed it Sudoku. He had shared how he created the name in just 25 seconds as he was in a rush to get to a horse race. He said he had not expected the name to stick. (“Sudoku” roughly translates to “single numbers.”)
Kaji along with his two childhood friends had started the company and it later became Nikoli.
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The 69-year-old wanted to create a puzzle, which was perfect. He once told New York Times that the secret behind his company’s success was that it largely tested and perfected existing puzzles.
In the late 1990s, he pitched the Sudoku puzzle to publishers in New York and London, but was unsuccessful in convincing them, he had told The Times. But, after a decade, the puzzle was being published across hundreds of newspapers globally.
According to the company statement, over 200 million people in 100 countries have so far solved the logic puzzle and a world championship is held each year.
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The statement further read how in 2017, an older man living after the devastating 2011 earthquake in Japan, wrote Kaji to inform him that his puzzles were too difficult and it inspired him to create more puzzles for children and older people.
Born on October 8, 1951, in Sapporo, Japan, his father was an engineer at a telecom company and mother worked at a kimono shop. He graduated from Shakujii High School in Tokyo, but dropped out of Keio University. He is survived by his wife, Naomi, and two daughters.
