When Was Sudoku Popular?
Sudoku was at its most popular between 2005 and 2007, peaking in 2005 — the year it went from a British newspaper curiosity to a worldwide phenomenon in under twelve months. The craze began on 12 November 2004, when The Times of London printed its first grid, and by mid-2005 Sudoku was in newspapers on every continent, on bestseller lists, on television and in the first mobile phone games. The mass-media boom faded around 2008, but the puzzle never actually declined — it moved to apps, where it is played far more today than at the height of the newspaper craze.
The popularity timeline at a glance
| Period | Status | What was happening |
|---|---|---|
| 1979–1983 | Obscure | Printed as Number Place in Dell magazines in the US; almost no recognition |
| 1984–1996 | Popular in Japan only | Nikoli renames it Sudoku; it becomes a major Japanese puzzle with a constructor community |
| 1997–2003 | Dormant in the West | Wayne Gould writes generator software; no newspaper has picked it up yet |
| Nov 2004 | Ignition | The Times of London prints its first Sudoku |
| 2005 | Peak | Global explosion: newspapers, books, TV, first mobile games |
| 2006–2007 | Plateau at high level | First World Championship; bestseller lists; merchandise everywhere |
| 2008–2012 | Media decline | Novelty fades; puzzle becomes a permanent fixture rather than a story |
| 2013–today | Stable and large | App era; more players than in 2005, far less press coverage |
2005: the year Sudoku took over
The speed of 2005 is what makes it unusual. Most puzzle formats spread over decades. Sudoku spread over months, and the sequence is easy to follow.
- January–March 2005. Every British national newspaper adds a daily Sudoku after The Times' success. Competing papers ran them within weeks of each other, several launching within the same fortnight.
- April 2005. Sudoku books appear and immediately sell. By summer, multiple Sudoku titles were sitting on British bestseller lists at once — a first for puzzle books.
- Mid-2005. The format crosses to the United States, Australia, India, continental Europe and Latin America through syndication. American newspapers adopt it despite the puzzle having existed in US magazines since 1979.
- July 2005. Sky One broadcasts a televised Sudoku programme in the UK, complete with a giant grid carved into a hillside as publicity. Television is the clearest marker that a puzzle has become mainstream news.
- Late 2005. Sudoku arrives on mobile phones and handheld consoles, laying the groundwork for the format it lives in today.
By December 2005 the puzzle was being described in the press as the fastest-spreading puzzle craze since the Rubik's Cube in the early 1980s.
Why it exploded in 2005 specifically
The puzzle needs no language
A crossword must be rewritten for every language and every culture. A Sudoku is identical in Tokyo, São Paulo and Manchester. Syndication across borders required no translation, no localisation and no editorial judgement — the single biggest reason it spread faster than any word puzzle ever has.
The rules fit in one sentence
Fill every row, column and 3×3 box with 1 to 9, no repeats. A newspaper could print the rules in a two-line box and never repeat them. Nothing had to be taught.
Difficulty could be graded by machine
Gould's software rated puzzles by which solving techniques they required, so papers could print easy grids on Monday and brutal ones on Saturday from the same pipeline. That turned a single puzzle into a week-long habit.
It was free to newspapers
Gould charged nothing for the puzzles, taking his income from books and software instead. Editors had no budget conversation to have. This is the decision that made the difference between a slow spread and a stampede.
It arrived at the right moment for print
Newspapers in 2004–2005 were losing readers to the internet and looking hard for reasons to keep a physical paper in someone's hands. A daily puzzle you cannot finish on a screen was exactly the kind of reason they wanted.
How popular was it, in numbers
| Measure | At the peak |
|---|---|
| UK national papers carrying a daily Sudoku | Effectively all of them, within months of Nov 2004 |
| Sudoku titles on bestseller lists | Several simultaneously through 2005–2006 |
| Countries with syndicated Sudoku | Well over 60 by the end of 2005 |
| World Sudoku Championship | First held in Lucca, Italy, March 2006 |
| Search interest | All-time high in 2005; a fraction of that level today |
| Actual players today | Higher than 2005 — spread across apps rather than newsprint |
That last row is the one people get wrong. Search interest and press coverage collapsed after 2008; participation did not. A puzzle stops being news long before it stops being played.
The World Sudoku Championship
The first World Sudoku Championship was held in Lucca, Italy, in March 2006, organised under the World Puzzle Federation, with national teams competing on classic grids and variants under time pressure. It has run annually since, and its existence is the clearest evidence that the 2005 boom left something permanent behind rather than simply evaporating.
Competitive solving looks nothing like newspaper solving. Top competitors finish a standard grid in two to three minutes, solve largely by pattern recognition rather than by writing candidates, and train on variants — Killer, Thermo, Arrow, Sandwich — that most casual solvers never encounter.
Did Sudoku die after 2007?
No. What ended was the media cycle, not the puzzle. Three things happened at once around 2008.
- It stopped being new. Newspapers write about crazes, not about fixtures. Once a Sudoku appeared daily in every paper, there was nothing left to report.
- The book market saturated. Hundreds of titles chased a demand that had already been met, and the shelf space contracted quickly.
- Play moved to phones. The App Store opened in 2008, and Sudoku was among the first puzzle formats to move there wholesale. Play became invisible to the metrics that had measured the craze.
Sudoku today is in the same category as the crossword: permanently present, rarely newsworthy. That is not decline. It is what success looks like after the novelty burns off.
Sudoku's popularity compared with other crazes
| Craze | Peak | Still played daily? |
|---|---|---|
| Rubik's Cube | 1980–1983 | Yes, with a large speedcubing community |
| Sudoku | 2005–2007 | Yes, at very large scale on mobile |
| Crossword | 1920s | Yes, a century on |
| Wordle | 2022 | Yes, though far below its peak |
The pattern repeats: a sharp spike of coverage, a collapse in press attention, and then a long stable plateau of people who simply kept playing. Sudoku followed it precisely.
Is Sudoku still popular in 2026?
Yes, and by the measure that matters — people playing — more than it was in 2005. Sudoku apps sit permanently in the top puzzle categories on both major app stores, every major newspaper still prints a daily grid, and the annual world championship continues. What no longer exists is the press coverage, which is why the puzzle feels less popular than it did.
The demographic has also widened. In 2005 Sudoku was largely a commuter's newspaper puzzle. Today it spans schoolchildren using it for logic practice, adults playing a few minutes at a time on a phone, and a competitive scene that solves grids in under three minutes.
The twenty-five years of obscurity before the boom
The most misunderstood fact about Sudoku's popularity is that the puzzle was already twenty-five years old when the craze started. It ran in American magazines from 1979 and in Japanese magazines from 1984. Millions of people had solved one. None of that produced a craze, and understanding why explains what actually happened in 2005.
In America the puzzle had no name recognition and no champion. Dell printed it anonymously near the back of magazines bought by crossword solvers, and nothing about it was promoted. In Japan it was genuinely popular but confined by language and distribution — Nikoli's magazines did not circulate abroad, and no Japanese publisher was trying to export a puzzle. Both markets had the product and neither had the distribution.
What changed in 2004 was not the puzzle and not the audience. It was one person deciding to hand a newspaper an unlimited free supply. The lesson generalises: crazes are almost never caused by the thing itself becoming better.
What the boom left behind
Three permanent structures came out of 2005–2007, and all three are still running.
- A daily newspaper slot. Twenty years on, Sudoku still occupies the puzzle page of essentially every major daily worldwide. That slot was created in 2005 and has never been given up.
- A competitive scene. The World Sudoku Championship, national qualifiers and an online competitive community all date from the boom years and continue annually.
- A variant ecosystem. Killer, Jigsaw, Hyper, Thermo, Arrow, Sandwich and dozens of others exist because the boom created enough constructors and enough demand to sustain experimentation. Most were designed after 2005.
Sudoku's popularity year by year, 2004 to today
| Year | What defined it |
|---|---|
| 2004 | The Times prints its first grid in November; rival British papers begin copying immediately |
| 2005 | Peak year. Global syndication, bestseller lists, television, first mobile versions |
| 2006 | First World Sudoku Championship in Italy; variants begin appearing in print |
| 2007 | Still very high; handheld console versions sell in large numbers |
| 2008 | App Store opens; play starts migrating to phones as press coverage falls away |
| 2009–2012 | Book market contracts sharply; newspaper slot stays untouched |
| 2013–2019 | Mobile becomes the dominant format; free ad-supported apps reach enormous audiences |
| 2020 | Lockdowns produce a visible bump in puzzle play across all formats |
| 2021–today | Stable and large; online solvers, daily-challenge apps and variant puzzles carry the format |
The shape is a spike followed by a long high plateau, not a spike followed by a collapse. Coverage collapsed. Play did not.
Frequently asked questions
When was Sudoku most popular?
2005, with the high plateau running through 2007. The craze started on 12 November 2004 when The Times of London printed its first grid, and search interest and press coverage both peaked during 2005.
When did the Sudoku craze start?
November 2004 in Britain. Within weeks every other British national newspaper had added one, and by mid-2005 it had spread worldwide through syndication.
Why did Sudoku become so popular so fast?
Five reasons compounding: it needs no language so it syndicated across borders instantly; the rules fit in one sentence; software could grade difficulty so papers could run easy-to-hard through the week; Wayne Gould supplied puzzles to newspapers free; and newspapers in 2004 were actively hunting for reasons to keep readers holding a physical paper.
Is Sudoku still popular today?
Yes — more people play it now than in 2005. The difference is that play moved from newsprint to phone apps, where it generates no headlines. Press coverage collapsed; participation did not.
When did Sudoku become popular in America?
2005, following the British boom. The irony is that the puzzle had been printed in American magazines since 1979 as Number Place — it had to travel to Japan and England before Americans noticed it.
When was Sudoku popular in Japan?
From 1984 onward. Nikoli renamed it Sudoku that year and it became a major Japanese puzzle with its own community of constructors — twenty years before the West discovered it.
Did Sudoku popularity decline?
Media attention declined sharply after 2008; play did not. The puzzle became a permanent fixture like the crossword, which by definition stops being newsworthy.
What made Sudoku spread faster than other puzzles?
It contains no words. A crossword must be rewritten for each language and culture; a Sudoku is identical everywhere. Syndication needed no translation and no editorial adaptation.
When was the first World Sudoku Championship?
March 2006, in Lucca, Italy, under the World Puzzle Federation. It has been held annually since.
How fast do champions solve a Sudoku?
Top competitors complete a standard grid in two to three minutes, working mostly by pattern recognition rather than by writing out candidates.
Was Sudoku on television?
Yes. Sky One ran a televised Sudoku programme in the UK in July 2005, promoted with a giant grid cut into a hillside — one of the clearest signs the puzzle had become general news rather than a puzzle-page item.
Who was responsible for making Sudoku popular?
Wayne Gould, a retired judge from New Zealand. He found the puzzle in Tokyo in 1997, spent six years writing software to generate and grade grids, then supplied them to newspapers free of charge starting with The Times in 2004.
Is Sudoku more popular than crosswords?
Globally, almost certainly — because it works in every language. In individual English-speaking markets the crossword still holds strong ground with older solvers and has a hundred-year head start.
Will Sudoku stay popular?
The pattern of the crossword suggests yes. Puzzles with simple rules and unlimited supply of fresh instances tend to persist indefinitely; puzzles that depend on novelty do not. Sudoku is firmly in the first category.
Where to go from here
The 2005 boom was really a distribution story rather than a puzzle story — the rules were 26 years old by then. Read about who created Sudoku puzzles and where Sudoku was invented, or jump straight to our free Sudoku solver.
