(B7) Research Brief: Initial Development

What to do with numbers?

I've been thinking a lot about the processes of sudokus and how this can be incorporated into the practice, but what about the numbers?

- Thought about grids and instagram and how the format presents itself to make a grid. 
- How could this work with sudoku, would it be a new platform for sudokus to be accessible. 

- Works as an idea but not so much as anything else. 
- It could be a way to display work, could use like the sliding squares game I thought about. 

Could think about the platform to experience this project.
- I think the physicality of doing a sudoku is what drew me to the topic in the first place. I personally prefer to complete sudoku's in a book with pen, so feels right for the project to have a physical outcome rather than a digital one. 
- Enjoy thinking about the process of the work and using this as the basis. 

Thinking about Sudoku grids how they can be changed to make different grids when repeated, the become very fine. 

Typeface from this grid:

Using 2 squares to make each letter. Trying to stay on the lines or connecting lines, for letters where this wasn't possible I used dots on the lines to represent the connection points. 

Single squares with the same principles.

- These look very sci-fi, space, dystopian future style.

- I don't know where these would fit within the project but could see if it is appropriate to use at any point moving forward. 

Duplicated grids:

Repeated again:

Letter from more complicated grid:

Feel like developing a typeface from the sudoku grids is a redundant process, they look clunky and message and don't hold much relation to the topics found in research.

- The manipulation of the grid is interesting, could lead to more developments with layout and composition.

 

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Work focused on a process:

Timeline of Results so far:

1.  Le Siècle, a Paris daily, published a partially completed 9×9 magic square with 3×3 subsquares on November 19, 1892.
   - In 1836, Le Siècle was founded as a paper that supported constitutional monarchism. However, when the July Monarchy came to an end in 1848, the paper soon changed its editorial stance to one of republicanism. Le Siècle opposed the rise of Napoleon III. The paper's relevance waned during the Third French Republic to the point where it was forced to cease publication in 1932 due to a lack of readers.
   - In 1860, at the peak of its popularity, the paper had a circulation of over 52,000.
   
   
2. On July 6, 1895, Le Siècle's rival, La France, refined the puzzle so that it was almost a modern Sudoku and named it carré magique diabolique ('evil magic square'). 
   - La France was a daily financial newspaper in the 19th century. Founded in August 1862 by Arthur de La Guéronnière, the newspaper originally followed an editorial line that reconciled loyalty to Napoleon III with the reaffirmation of the temporal power of the Pope. It was bought in 1874 by Émile de Girardin, founder of the famous newspaper La Presse and a longtime collaborator of La Guéronnière.
   
   
3. In the 1950s, W. U. Behrens of Hannover, Germany, discussed very similar grids filled with numbers—not as a game or a puzzle for the amusement of newspaper readers but as a design for agricultural experiments.
   
   - What could this possibly have to do with agriculture? Suppose you’re testing several new seed varieties to see which ones produce the best yield. When you lay out test plots in a field, you need to be careful to avoid biases, such as putting all the samples of one variety in the area that has the most water or the richest soil. A Latin-square arrangement is a good start on such a design. With n crop varieties, an n-by-n Latin square assures that each plant type is equally represented in every column and every row, compensating for many common patterns of variation, such as a field that gets steadily moisture from one side to the other. But a Latin-square arrangement cannot guarantee fairness in the presence of other patterns, such as compact patches of better or worse soil. And so Behrens proposed choosing designs from a subclass of all Latin squares, namely those in which numbers are distributed evenly not only among the columns and rows but also in predefined blocks. This subclass of Latin squares he called gerechte designs, meaning fair or impartial.

   - The purpose of a gerechte design in agricultural experimentation is to ensure that all treatments are fairly exposed to any different conditions in the field. In fact, “gerecht(e)” is the German for “fair” in the sense of “just”. Rows and columns are good for capturing differences such as distance from a wood but not for marking out stony patches or other features that tend to clump in compact areas. Thus, in the statistical and agronomic literature, the regions of a gerechte design are always taken to be “spatially compact” areas.

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   
4. Although sudoku-type patterns had been used earlier in agricultural design, their first appearance in puzzle form was in 1979 in a New York-based puzzle magazine, which called them Number Place puzzles.
   

   The realisation that this could become a popular phenomenon was made in Manhattan, New York in the late 1970s by Dell Puzzle Magazines, which has been producing crosswords and other puzzles since 1931. Its editor-in-chief, Abby Taylor, who joined in 1980, said: 'No one knows exactly when it started or who devised it, but the oldest copy I can find in our archive is 1979. We called the puzzle Number Place and still do today.'

   For years Dell continued to publish Number Place among numerous other brain teasers. Taylor said: 'It was only about five or six years ago that we got a lot more mail from people who said they enjoyed it. We decided to feature it more and produced a complete book of Number Place puzzles. But we didn't suspect it would become a global phenomenon.'

   
   
5. Modern Sudoku only began to gain widespread popularity in 1986 when it was published by the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli under the name Sudoku, meaning "single number".
   - Nikoli Co., Ltd. (Japanese: 株式会社ニコリ, Hepburn: Kabushiki-gaisha, Nikori) is a Japanese publisher that specializes in games and, especially, logic puzzles. Nikoli is also the nickname of a quarterly magazine (whose full name is Puzzle Communication Nikoli) issued by the company in Tokyo. Nikoli was established in 1980 and became prominent worldwide with the popularity of Sudoku.

   The name "Nikoli" comes from the racehorse who won the Irish 2,000 Guineas in 1980; the president of Nikoli, Maki Kaji, is fond of horseracing and betting.

   
   
6. In 1997 New Zealander Wayne Gould, a retired judge from Hong Kong, came across a book of sudoku puzzles in Tokyo and decided to develop computer programs for generating them.
   - Seven years later Wayne Gould sent some of his puzzles to The Times of London, which printed its first one on Nov. 15, 2004.
   
   
7. National newspapers scrambled to advertise the puzzle on their front pages, while websites devoted to it sprang up and TV and radio stations caught the new global bug (2005).
   - Scientists have identified Sudoku as a classic meme - a mental virus which spreads from person to person and sweeps across national boundaries. Dr Susan Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine, said: 'This puzzle is a fantastic study in memetics. It is using our brains to propagate itself across the world like an infectious virus.'
   - Sudoku - pronounced soo-doe-koo - does not require general knowledge, linguistic ability or even mathematical skill.
   - Dubbed the Rubik's Cube of the 21st century.
   - No one knows exactly when it started or who devised it, but the oldest copy I can find in our archive is 1979. We called the puzzle Number Place and still do today.'
   
   
8. In May 2006 Time magazine listed Gould as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. 

^Use this as content for the publication showcasing process. 

Thinking about the process when writing a book:
When I made significant changes to the publication I made the old changes to 10% opacity. This meant the layering of mistakes was visible but not most prominent. 
- The idea stemmed from the way we complete sudokus, making mistakes and then having to backtrack to make the correct choice more prominent.

I like the idea and think the outcome has potential, it's currently displaying a digital visual rather than a physical one. 
- Could be a good idea to start experimenting with physical production, thinking about what my peers said in the latest crit. 

Should take idea forward and start developing more experimental imagery running along different themes.
- 17 clues
- Repetition
- 3x3 grid

- Pencil.pen marks

- Patterns

- Symmetry

- 81 cells

Use these as prompts for visual work. 
For content use the timeline of events. I think this is a strong starting point as I'm displaying my findings within the outcome. 

How do I use sudoku?

Think about the patterns, where the eye looks, remember the comment about "openings". 

Could place information where I tap the pen
- Add in marks and notations for the different things I do.
- Remember the terminology could use these somehow, create icons and place, notations etc.