Learn & Play Sudoku for Third Grade

Based on grade-appropriate math concepts, student will encounter three variations of puzzles and practice problem-solving skills on puzzles of increasing difficulty. Contains 45 different puzzles including two Super Challenge puzzles. Learn and Play Sudoku is correlated to NCTM Problem-Solving Standards.

What Is Sudoku?
Whether you are traveling or just relaxing on a Sunday morning, Sudoku is a pastime that the
whole family can enjoy. The Sudoku craze has taken over. It is
goodbye to crossword puzzles and magic squares. If you search
the word Sudoku on Google™, you will get over 70 million
hits. Sudoku puzzles are published in newspapers, magazines,
and books. They even come in electronic handheld games or
interactive games on the Web.
Sudoku is a logic puzzle. Each puzzle has one or more mini-grids.
Each mini-grid has boxes that are arranged in rows and columns.
Hints are given in some of the boxes. There are different types
of puzzles. The puzzles can be 1 x 1 grids, 2 x 2 grids, 2 x 3 grids, 3 x 3 grids, or even more.
Pictures, letters, and numbers are all used within the puzzles in this series.
The objective of a Sudoku puzzle is to fill in all the boxes of the puzzle using only the given
hints. Each column, row, and mini-grid must have each picture, letter, or number only once.
That means you have to pay attention to three things while you try to solve these puzzles. You
have to look up and down the column, across the row, and around the mini-grid!
The History of Sudoku
How did the Sudoku craze start? Sudoku puzzles first appeared in a
U.S. magazine in 1979. At that time it was called “number place.”
A magazine editor from Japan saw the number place puzzle and
liked it so much that he decided to create a magazine with his
version of it. He called the puzzle Sudoku. The word su in Japanese
means number, and the word doku means single. The puzzle
became very popular in Japan. Today, 660,000 Sudoku magazines
are circulated every month in Japan.
The Sudoku craze spread to the United Kingdom when Wayne
Gould saw the puzzle in a magazine while working in Hong Kong.
He was fascinated by the puzzles, so he created a computer program
to generate Sudoku puzzles. Then, he sold his idea to the London Times. They used Gould’s
program to create a series for their daily games pages. Other newspapers then jumped on the
bandwagon, spreading the craze back to the United States. In April 2005, Sudoku became a
regular feature in the New York Post. The Daily News and USA Today followed a few months
later.