How did the concept of zero evolve?
My interest in this is the link between the invention of zero — made in India, probably around 400CE — and the Buddhist/Hindu mystical idea of ‘nothingness’. In the West, we didn’t invent zero. We thought of nothing as, literally, nothing. But in India the idea that nothing was something was already a religious conviction, which helped bring about the mathematical idea. Sudoku, it seems, was originally invented in the US. The Japanese saw it and ran with it. Can you take us through the entire Sudoku story? Sudoku was originally called Number Place, and was invented by an American puzzle enthusiast called Howard Garns about 30 years ago. It was hardly noticed. Then a Japanese puzzle magazine editor, Maki Kaji, revamped the puzzle, called it Sudoku, placed the given numbers in a symmetrical pattern, and in the early 80s put it in his Japanese magazine. Some more people noticed but not that many, and only in Japan. Then, about a decade ago a retired Hong Kong judge, Wayne Gould, who was h
