Sudoku-obsessed Canadians now have a game of their own

A little coffee break gaming is a great way to decompress, and while Sudoku is a classic, it is not so Canadian.

Two Canadians have decided to put a Canuck twist on the game, swapping-out Sudoku’s puzzle numbers for snapshots of all things from the Great White North.

The canoe, beavers, maple syrup, moose, hockey, lacrosse, snowflakes and polar bears are all quintessential northern elements, which are now populating the Sudoku game grid in the next evolution of online gameplay.

The game was created by brothers Mark and Jeff Rogers of Ottawa.

"It's Canadian emojis plus Sudoku and it equals Canoku," Mark said. "It’s all things Canadian and we love building games that have a Canadian tie."

Jeff Rogers said Canoku has a variety of grid sizes, along with five levels of difficulty from beginner to expert to make the game fun for all ages.

"You can do four-by-four for easier, six-by-six for medium and then nine-by-nine to make it a bit harder," Jeff said.

"Traditional Sudoku is a nine-by-nine grid of numbers and it’s got three-by-three boxes. You have to have the numbers, one to nine, in every column, row and box. The same with Canoku, but with emojis."

This is the second all-Canadian game by the Rogers brothers, who created the word-puzzle game Canuckle, a spin-off of the popular app Wordle, which became an online hit.

"We’ve been excited that a lot of people have started playing Canoku and we’ve got a diverse crowd that play our game," said Mark.

"We’ve heard from teachers, from kids and our kids' friends that they’re really enjoying the game so far and our biggest referring site to our game has been from Google Classrooms which means we’re really getting the uptick from the schools."

Rogers said many elementary school teachers have provided positive feedback to the game and that children can more easily visualize the perplexing puzzle using emojis over numbers.

"My Grade 3s love it," said Lara Devereaux, a teacher in Ottawa.

"I project it on my screen and we play as a class. We tried the six-by-six and have just done the beginner so far. The kids really like matching the pictures and figuring out which one is missing from each column and row."

Keeners for Canoku can throw on a bunny hug, grab a double-double and head over to http://www.canoku.ca  to give it a go, eh!