I am sure you all have seen and solved or at least tried to solve those number puzzles that are published in the newspapers under the name Sudoku , in the entertainment pages. Apparently number puzzle squares first appeared in France in the second part of the nineteenth century and were published in the local newspapers of the time. The first ones were called magic squares, but they dealt mainly with arithmetic operations and could have numbers with two digits inside. However, the shape and number of squares is similar to the ones we know nowadays – nine by nine little squares grouped in three by three other squares. The game we know today as Sudoku is the modern Japanese variant and it can be found now all over the world. It is popular not only when printed in newspapers and magazines, but also on specialized web sites on the Internet.
Side-oku 1.2 that you can see right here in the screenshot is just a software application, actually a small sidebar gadget that can only be used with Windows Vista and 7. Any way, it’s not much useful for you unless you plan to relax or train your mind solving the puzzle that you can always see on your desk.It is supposed to be fun and funny at the same time. It can be downloaded as freeware and installed pretty easily, just like all the other sidebar gadgets developed by the software company called Home Cooked Gadgets. It offers to all the users the possibility to get this tiny 475 KB application and install it on their desktop . It can be played when you are either docked or undocked.
Even it is pretty small, this includes its data base which contains over 3000 of Sudoku puzzles that can be accessed one by one, sequentially or randomly. You can play Sudoku really easily. All you have to do is place the mouse cursor inside of a square and use either the mouse or the keyboard to write the correct number inside. At the end of the game, if everything is correct, you will be praised and you will be said that this was the exact solution. One more thing: even if we all know Sudoku as a square with nine by nine squares line, but you can always adjust its size and choose the number of lines you want the table to have. When you get tired of this game, simply delete it from your computer desktop.
