But yes, I was reliably informed by Japanese friends, after 'nanpure' was listed as the Japanese for sudoku in a recent textbook.
This seemed particularly odd to me - outside Japan we all know sudoku as a Japanese puzzle, with a Japanese name. And yet that's not the case actually in Japan??
Pretty much. Which set me off on a bit of delving.
There seem to be two (maybe interlinked) reasons for this mysterious reversal.
1. The puzzle is not necessarily, entirely, Japanese. There have been a whole bunch of similar number puzzles historically, and worldwide. And in the 20th century the (relatively obscure?) American puzzle, Number Place, made its way to Japan. It was popular, got modified, named sudoku, and later on, re-exported to the West ...where it was a huge hit and generally known as 'Japanese'. But in Japan - unlike the West - the original Number Place moniker still had resonance.
2. This one is anecdotal from another Japanese friend, but makes pretty good sense: the term 'sudoku' was actually copyrighted, in Japan, by a certain Japanese publisher. As a result, other publications could use the same puzzle concept, but they had to call it something else. And nanpure seems to have been the most ready option. Overseas, however, where there was no breach of copyright, all puzzles were presented as 'sudoku'.
Anyway, hope that's provided a little Thursday interest. Time for coffee (with no puzzles) for me.
- Sudoku itself is a Japanese portmanteau for 数字は独身に限る (suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru) roughly 'keep the digits single'. As you might have guessed, portmanteau words from many languages are popular in Japanese!
- Nanpure ナンプレ is written in a different script, katakana - reserved for borrowed foreign words.
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