By Tim Kelly and Elaine Lies TOKYO (Reuters) - Maki Kaji, a puzzle enthusiast and publisher who was known as the Godfather of Sudoku - the number puzzle played daily by millions around the world - has died, his company said. He was 69. A university dropout who worked in a printing company before founding Japan s first puzzle magazine, Kaji took hints from an existing number puzzle to create what he later named sudoku - a contraction of the Japanese for every number must be single - sometime in the mid-80s. The logic puzzle challenges people to fill a grid of 9X9 blocks, with nine boxes in each block so that all columns, both vertical and horizontal, contain the numbers 1 to 9 without repetition. The number of filled-in figures for a grid at the start of the puzzle determines how difficult it is. Known as the Godfather of Sudoku, he was adored by puzzle lovers around the world and we would like to express our gratitude to all of you, his company, Nikoli, said on its website on Monday. T
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put New Zealand under strict lockdown on Tuesday after the country's first coronavirus case in six months was reported in the largest city of Auckland.
The Chinese government took a stake and a board seat in a key ByteDance entity this year - a move that raises questions over how much influence Beijing is planning to wield in a tech sector reeling under an onslaught of regulatory action.
New Zealand thrown into lockdown over single suspected Delta case netscape.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from netscape.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SYDNEY (Reuters) -On-the-spot fines for people breaking lockdown rules in Sydney and the rest of its home state of New South Wales have been raised sharply to as much as A$5,000 ($3,700) as the state logged a record jump in daily new COVID-19 infections.