In fact, however, the government’s discovery of one man,
Tetsuya Miyamoto, was a significant contributing factor in what emerged as a borderspanning,
language-independent craze for Kashikoku Naru—literally translated as the “It
Will Make You Smarter” puzzle (Figure 1). On the surface, Kashikoku Naru looked like
the very popular Sudoku—a grid of blank squares, each awaiting a single digit number
that was, within each column or row, unique