Someone called Jimmy contacted me the other day about the Japanese mahjong sets available on http://japanese-mahjong.com to ask whether I could offer any sets of a similarly high quality with… Western numerals in the top right corner…
I explained that that was a big no-no as far as my site was concerned. Only genuine Japanese mahjong sets there, I’m afraid!
Anyway, I checked out the link in Jimmy’s signature and found out that he had made an interactive sudoku game:
http://www.sparkleinteractive.co.uk/sudoku/
“Sudoku” is a compound Japanese word that combines the characters for “number” (su) and “single” (doku). The sudoku puzzle was invented by an American architect called Howard Garns and was originally called “Number Place” when it was published in an American magazine in 1979.
In 1986 it was published in a Japanese puzzle magazine under the name “Sudoku”. Subsequently, the game was reimported into America and Europe and the Japanese name stuck, doubtless giving the puzzle an air of oriental mystery.
Funnily enough, in Japan the puzzle has been renamed “Nanpure”, pronounced “nan-poo-ray”. This is a good example of the way modern Japanese takes foreign words, mashes them together to form a new “Japanese” word. In this case, the words are “number” and “play” (or perhaps “place” from the original name of the game)…
Number = “Nanbaa” = “Nan”
Play = “Pure”
“Nan” + “Pure” = Nanpure!
So you could say that “Sudoku” is the English word for Japanese “number play”, or vice versa!
Now we have sorted that out, here’s a game for you to play!
Cheers!
David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com
