Move Over, Tetris and Rubik's. Su Doku's Coming to Town.

It's square, it's tricky, and it's about to hit this country?most likely in a very big way. It's Su Doku, an irresistible game of logic that's out to seduce every country in the world.

A little over a week ago?and just one week after a dinner party at which she first heard about a puzzling new game craze called Su Doku that's sweeping the globe?Newmarket Press president and publisher Esther Margolis acquired the U.S. rights to The Big Book of Su Doku #1 and The Big Book of Su Doku #2. "It had been completely off my radar," says Margolis. "I went home that night and looked on the Internet, and was awed by the huge success of the games in the U.K. We moved very quickly after that." The books, now set to ship in mid-August and early September, respectively, are slated for a first print run of 50,000 copies each. At the same time, John Wiley & Sons is preparing Su Doku for Dummies for an August release, and HarperResource is releasing the three-volume series New York Post Su Doku in August, September and October. What's all the fuss? Only the most addictive game of logic to hit the States since Hungarian inventor Erno Rubik started selling his little colored cubes. Story continues below ?

Su Doku (sometimes spelled Sudoku) is a number game that consists of a grid of nine rows by nine rows broken into nine different boxes, each consisting of nine squares. The challenge in this dangerously compulsive time-waster is ensuring that each row, column and box contains the numbers one through nine. If that doesn't sound particularly addictive, consider this: The Bookseller reports that for the week ending July 16, eight of the 20 top-selling nonfiction titles in the U.K. were Su Doku books. There are currently 17 Su Doku?themed books on the U.K. market (including the bestsellers The Times Su Doku and How to Do Su Doku); to date, they have sold a combined 725,000 copies. Puzzles run in four national newspapers in the U.K., and Su Doku junkies there can now download the games onto their cell phones. In the U.S, newspapers like the New York Post, the Detroit Free Press and the Los Angeles Times have started to carry the game?in some cases on a daily basis.

Su Doku, which means "single number" in Japanese, was first introduced to the U.K. in November by Wayne Gould, a former high-court judge in Hong Kong, and the author of HarperResource's New York Post Su Doku. Gould bought a Japanese book of the puzzles in 1997, and spent the next six years developing a computer program that would produce new Su Doku puzzles. The program he developed ensures that he can produce an almost infinite number of unique Su Doku grids, and he currently provides the puzzles for free to newspapers throughout the world, including the Post. "Su Doku is a logic puzzle, and there aren't many of those around," he says. "Puzzle pages in newspapers are usually full of word games, of one kind or another, or possibly math games. . . . [Su Doku] is language-indifferent, so it can spread easily from country to country."


Su Doku Puzzle

Dell Puzzle Magazines has been producing the Su Doku prototype, called Number Place, since 1979, and plans to put out a couple of their own Su Doku puzzles in the coming months, as well as some Number Place books. Editor-in-chief Abby Taylor says she can't remember the last time a puzzle gained such worldwide popularity. "It's been big in Japan for years," she says. "It wasn't until it hit England that it became very popular worldwide. Now that everyone's so connected, it's much easier for this kind of thing to spread."

As for whether the Su Doku craze will reach the same heights here that it has in the U.K., thus far U.S. publishers are cautiously optimistic. "It's hard to tell," says Taylor. "The United States is a bigger country with a much more diverse population, so it's hard to say if it will take off. We think it will." But according to Margolis, "The addiction is definitely spreadable." When her 30-something nephew came to visit this past weekend, Margolis introduced him to the puzzles. "He started doing some on Friday, and by Sunday he went through all of the ones I had. And by Sunday night he was printing them out online so he'd have something to do on the plane." And Margolis has even more reason to be confident. Between July 7 and July 15 of this year, the U.K. version of The Big Book of Su Doku sold 12,584 copies, or 1,573 copies a day. Not bad for a book that has nothing to do with you-know-who.