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sudoku

UK/sʊˈdəʊku/US/sʊˈdoʊku/
nounB1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: sudokus

Sudoku is a puzzle of filling a grid so no number repeats. Do the sudoku.

It needs no arithmetic at all, and the numbers could be any nine symbols. Sudoku was popularised in Japan and invented by an American architect in 1979.

Tim Stellmach · CC0

Definitions of sudoku

  1. 1nounsudokuA puzzle of filling a grid so no number repeats.B1

    “The sudoku in the paper took nine minutes on a good day.”

sudoku is a puzzle.

Where it comes from

  1. Japanese

    数独

  2. English, today

    sudoku

Borrowed from Japanese 数独.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Games & Toys

Practise this word

sudoku in the wild

  • Killer sudoku pla(ce)) is a puzzle that combines elements of sudoku and kakuro.

    Killer sudoku

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.