Su Do Kool

If you don’t know what Su Do Ku is, then essentially you just haven’t lived. For the uninformed it’s the crazy new number game where you have to fit numbers into a grid that is taking the nation by storm.

However it’s no flash in the pan – the origins of this number game can be traced back as far as January 2005.

The puzzle was first invented by housewife Sue Doke-You in a rather bizarre twist of fate. She’d picked up her trusty weekly copy of Take A Break and turned to the puzzle page ready to tackle another crossword in the advert break between Trisha and This Morning (so long ago, it’s when Trisha was still on a good channel).

The grid was easily found, but the clues were not. Due to a printing error at the Take A Break factory, this particular copy had half of a GCSE Maths paper (coincidently also printed at the Take A Break factory) stuck inside it. Sue was half watching the tv at this moment – she was in debt and had just seen a rare solution to her problems during the advert break – and did not notice the error and answered the maths questions as if they were the crossword solutions.

In YET ANOTHER coincidence, these solutions actually fit, and an early version of Su Du Ko was born. Sue liked this game so much, that she started developing her own “number words” (as it was originally called), but realised that it was a bit limited when the only clues she could give would be sums.

After a tinkering with the format, she came up with the grid system, and tried to sell the puzzle to Take A Break – but they were having none of it, branding it “the worst puzzle since we launched 'Spot The ‘Cock' at the Badminton World Championships”.

Harsh rejections followed from places as far apart as Quiz Kidz and Asian Babes. The big break though, came from the place where so many respected puzzlers have started – The Sunday Sport. They printed it after an unusual shortage of topless models and it was an instant hit. Soon people just couldn’t wait for until Sunday for their hit of number magic, and Su Do Ku was printed in the Daily Sport – and then every national and regional paper to ever exist. The rest, they say is history.

So what now for Su Do Ku? In a first for a puzzle, it’s actually getting its own food and drink based spin offs – Chicken Stu Do Ku and Irn Bru Do Ku.

If that wasn’t enough though, there is even a Su Do Ku song out soon – Su Do Kool & The Gang – Celebrate Good Times Tables.