When did the sudoku puzzle spread outside Japan?

In 2004, the sudoku was found in British newspapers. There was one specific British newspaper to be exact. It was The Times. A man who was either visiting or living in Hong Kong saw the puzzle in one of the newspapers there. He was so intrigued by it that he decided that it was time for Britain to start putting those into their own newspapers.

When he went back, he encouraged newspapers in other parts of the world to include this type of number puzzle in their own newspapers. However, the man found this out in 1997 and so it took a while before Great Britain caught on. Then in 2004 and a year later it started to spread outside of both Japan and Great Britain to other parts of the world.