@DukeZhou hey there

@DukeZhou Convention here is that you include context with your question, i.e. you should include exactly what you just told me in the body of the question itself

@DukeZhou it helps people know how to help you to know what you know already, and what angle you're approaching it from.

@DukeZhou That being said let me offer some other advice that will be helpful for your question in particular. First, include the tag "reference-request", since I think you would benefit from a source of general information about that topic. Second, try looking up its relationship to Latin Squares.

i say latin squares because they are easier to understand than the group theory interpretation of sudokus, which is going to be too advanced for a middle school context.

Nevermind, I confused the posts (there are two which seem pretty similar). Sorry.

@AlexanderGruber I appreciate the advice. I started designing games based on Latin squares and Sudoku (constraint systems) back in 2007 with the encouragement of a friend at the Clay Institute. I didn't start researching the mathematic of Sudoku until I has a set of mechanics worth analyzing (2012). Since then I've monitored the "Mathematics of Sudoku" wiki and have noted the notation used is slowly moving toward the way I'm doing it.

(In 2012 they described it as "9x9", which a few years later became 3x3, and now it appears on the brink of properly becoming 3^2 which is descriptive in notation and natural language "three squared". But I have no formal background mathematics, and this is clearly a problem! :)