Su Doku or Sudoku?
The Times prefers Su Doku whereas the rest of the world seems to have settled upon Sudoku. A forum user has kindly provided the following definitive judgement: The Sudoku puzzle is also called “number place”. The name Sudoku is used in the puzzle magazine Nikori, and is said to be an abbreviation for Suji wa dokushinsha ni kagiru (“numeral(s) limited to a single person”). So doku is an abbreviation for dokushinsha (single person or bachelor), probably referring to the fact that only one of each digit can appear in a row, column or box. A better translation might therefore be “Single Number”, “Unique Digits” or something similar.
