Sudoku is a mathematical puzzle. The numerical crossword was invented by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in the 18th century. Now these crosswords are printed as an entertainment page in various newspapers and magazines, on websites like https://sudoku-guru.com, both for adults and children, and are also published as independent collections.
The rules
The square playing field of Sudoku has a size of 9×9 cells, divided into smaller squares with a side of 3 cells. There are 81 cells in the field in total, in some of them at the beginning of the game there are already numbers from 1 to 9. The player needs to fill all the free cells with numbers from 1 to 9 in such a way that each number appears in a row, column and its own 3×3 square only once.
The benefit
Doing Sudoku is not only entertainment. Mathematical and logical puzzles develop the brain: they train memory, logic, and concentration. Doing puzzles helps maintain cognitive functions and prevents the decline in brain activity with age. Sudoku can be considered an element of preventing dementia, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease.
When doing a numerical crossword, attention is concentrated on the task (which is very important in the modern era of attention deficit and the difficulty of maintaining it for a long time on one object). The brain needs to keep in its “field of vision” all the numbers already on the playing field, remember their location in the cells. In this way, memory for numbers and the spatial arrangement of objects is trained.
Psychologists claim that doing Sudoku helps relieve stress (attention switches from obsessive negative thoughts to the riddle) and even cope with depression.
Doing Sudoku is useful for children to develop cognitive abilities, and for adults to maintain mental tone, and for the elderly to slow down the degradation of brain functions.