Retired Kelowna school teacher graduates to World famous Sudoku Guy

KELOWNA – A retired Kelowna school teacher has amassed thousands of fans around the world for his entertaining and informative online Sudoku tutorials.

Robin Jarman, 76, is Sudoku Guy. With roughly 3,000 visits to his YouTube videos every day and 9,700 subscribers watching his more than 80 videos, Jarman is fast becoming the go-to-guy for everything Sudoku.

Sudoku is a Japanese puzzle game that uses numbers, but Jarman says math skills aren’t required.

“It’s got nothing to do with math,” he says. “You could use letters, it’s all the same logic. I teach you steps that are all based on logic.”

Jarman retired from teaching music and geography in 1999 and became supervisor of music and a consultant for the school district. After that he started a second career as a professional tour guide around the world. That’s when he found Sudoku.

“When I first started there was only two or three countries in the world that had Sudoku,” he says. “Now it’s in 177. My site goes all over the world.”

Jarman has more than 80 instructional videos uploaded to YouTube, ranging in difficulty from beginner to advanced. His videos have more than 1.5 million views, making his the most popular Sudoku instructional channel on YouTube. He even has videos for children.

His style is fun and easy to understand, he wears bow ties and gives helpful tips and encouragement like what to do when you realize you made a mistake.

"Put a line through the puzzle. Try another puzzle. Above all SMILE. It’s not the end of the world!!!"

“I make very little money,” he says. “I do it for the love of it. It’s a passion. I’ve got hundreds, in fact thousands of comments underneath the videos from all over the world saying how much they appreciate the videos.”

Jarman plans to continue uploading a new video each month and keep puzzling.

“I did one this morning over breakfast.”

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