36 officers, 81 squares and 1 dead language

Speaker: Colva Roney-Dougal (Maths, St Andrews)

Abstract

In this talk we’ll take a wander through the history of Sudoku puzzles, looking at their mathematical origin as Latin squares. The further development of Sudoku type grids was prompted by the design of agricultural experiments, where one needs to separate the effects of the treatment from localised effects in the field. We’ll see how a theorem on marriage can be used to solve Sudoku puzzles, and finish with a discussion of how to generate a random puzzle.