One day, as I browsed through a bookstore, I saw a magazine containing hundreds of Sudoku puzzles, bought one and shared it with a nephew who became hooked. He is a mathematician wizard all right, but solving the Sudoku did not involve pure mathematics skills (so I thought). It is a small square of 9x9 boxes with some numbers in it. It employed logic. It is fun. He carried it to the extreme that even when we have family get-togethers, I would catch him solving in the guise of watching the television!

Sudoku’s attraction stems from its simplest rules, yet solving it may require a complex of reasoning. Once you start, you are challenged not to stop till you have solved it. And then you start another. And another. Yet, this columnist sees Sudoku as some truly scary puzzles—a simple yet mentally challenging phenomenon.

When this columnist joined the RP team in the 3rd World Sudoku Championship in Goa, India, held recently (of which the BusinessMirror is the exclusive media partner and sponsor of the Mathematicians Trainers Guild, or MTG-Philippines), I felt it was my obligation to share this newfound brain teaser with my countrymen. Modesty aside, I told myself, who better to start this than a neophyte puzzler who wants more challenge. In between interviews and observing how the worldwide competition was being done, I discovered that a person who is just beginning to solve Sudoku puzzles and is willing to spend a few days off to study the techniques, procedures and solving strategies will get off to a running start to solving these puzzles with relative ease. A word of caution: do not expect to breeze through the book like a novel and start solving the puzzles. One has to subsequently study and put in lots of practice.

The Holiday Inn was the exotic venue for the 3rd World Sudoku Championship, where the greatest puzzlers, from 30 countries, gathered to fight it out over two days for individual and team honors. Although Goa is sweltering—36°C—and the humidity is off the scale, these people were here to solve Sudoku with an intensity and speed that would leave your average commuter scratching his head. Inside an air-conditioned hall, 89 participants have their heads bent over grids of numbers. The challenge is to improve solving speed and to tackle the more difficult puzzle levels.

American idol

On the first day of competition the players were presented with a blizzard of Sudoku variants with names such as Quad Max and Alphabet Substitution Twins, requiring the puzzlers to do much more than simply rattle through the grids. There were some amazing feats of speed in the classic puzzle rounds. Jakub Ondrousek, a young Czech, completed eight fiendish puzzles in only 18 minutes. The shining star during the first day was Michael Collins, 35, a fund manager from London, when, mid-round, the electricity cut out for about 30 seconds, he was the only puzzler to reach into his bag and pull out a torch to keep solving.

The outstanding player of this worldwide competition was Thomas Snyder of the United States. He won the championship for the second year running, beating a Japanese player and two Czechs in the playoffs. He likewise won the competition to find the best solver of classic Sudoku puzzles, beating Britain’s David McNeill, a lecturer in electronic engineering at Queen’s University.

Snyder, 28, who has a PhD in biochemistry and is studying bioengineering at Stanford, is tagged as the superstar in the Sudoku world. He has the technique and the experience and the brain buster that processes the visual data in Sudoku faster than anyone else. Shying away from an interview, Snyder simply tells this columnist: “I take advantage of my talents.” True indeed, Snyder solved the puzzle in two minutes and 26 seconds, lifting the Classic Cup.

The British team, sponsored by Puzzler Media, finished ninth. David McNeill, 44, reached the quarterfinal play-offs for the second year running and was narrowly edged out of the final four. George Danker, 17, a student at Hampton School in West London, was placed 29th, Michael Collins was 43rd and Simon Anthony, 34, an investment banker from London, came 75th.

The team competition was won by Czech Republic. The Australian team came last—hardly surprising, given that only one of the four players had done a Sudoku puzzle just before the competition. Calling themselves the Numbats, the team of rugby mates from the University of Western Australia Club in Perth managed to get sponsorship to come to Goa and was the first team to wear blazers and flip-flops. They made up for their lack of success by winning all the drinking competitions (they were the only team taking part). Laughing it off, team captain Mark Skiffington says with pride: “We are proud to have represented our country, and we owe our gratitude to our sponsors.”

Each country was represented officially by four players. A country could send more players, but competed as individuals. Turkey had nine players while Slovakia and China totaled to eight players each. Belarus sent a one-man team.

The Philippine team was represented by Mariel Alexis Dee, Jacqueline Joyce Oh (the youngest participant at 14) and Frederick Ong. Dee and Oh are students, and Ong is a young businessman from Bacolod City. They were accompanied by team captain and vice president of MTG-Phils. Rechilda Villame and this columnist. The Philippine team garnered the 17th slot in the team competition.

Further individual results were: Overall champion Thomas Snyder (USA), next in line were Yuhei Kusui (Japan), Jakub Ondrousek (Czech Republic) and Jakub Hrazdira (Czech Republic); Classic topnotch Thomas Snyder (USA), followed by David McNeill (UK) and Michael Ley (Germany); Team champion of the world went to Czech Republic, while Japan, Germany and the USA came in second, third and fourth, respectively.

MTG president Dr. Simon Chua believes the Philippine team will harvest better results in the forthcoming international Sudoku competitions. “Our Filipino youths can bring honor to the country if these young math wizards are only given proper training and exposure.”

The MTG, organized by a group of math teachers, started training students in mid-1990s to prepare them for local and international mathematics competition, including the Euclid Contest, and Kangaroo and Westpac medals, and the most prestigious Mathematics Olympics given by the Australian Mathematics Competition.

Together with the BusinessMirror and other corporate sponsors, the National Finals of Sudoku Super Challenge was held in January this year at the University of Makati. The sponsors include Coca-Cola Phils., the City Government of Makati, SanMig Coffee, Faber-Castell, Phoenix Publishing House, Chow­king, Illustrado, Mang Inasal, Philippine Graphic magazine, dwIZ, Home Radio and RJ 100.

Still rising

While Sudokumania has ebbed in Britain—the frenzy of the early days replaced by a steady enthusiasm—the wave is still rolling all over the world. In India there are more than 10 million Sudoku players and rising fast. In Bangladesh 48,000 entered the competition to form a team to send to the championships. More significantly, the Chinese are now Sudoku enthusiasts. Last year only a handful of Chinese publications carried Sudoku. Now there are 19 daily papers with a puzzle and more than 200 Sudoku magazines.

Sun Shu Ping, general manager of Beijing Sudoku and Culture Society Development Ltd., which sponsored the Chinese team, estimates there are now 2 million players in China. How many more will be next year? She says, “Perhaps 20 million, even more.”

Sudoku is a Japanese abbreviation of suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru, which means “the numbers must occur only once.” It originally started in the US in the ’70s sporting the name “Number Place.” A Japanese publisher, on a trip to the US, saw it and brought the idea to Japan. Soon it caught like wild fire there.

In a rare chance encounter with Tetsuya Nishio, puzzle designer from Tokyo, Japan, he says he has written numerous books on Sudoku that have been the latest craze puzzles around the world, and many people will attest to being infuriated, frustrated and befuddled by the number puzzle.

“The tips available won’t tell you [very] much, but from your knowledge and experience, you will need analytical tools and techniques to solve the puzzles,” he said.

A never-ending discovery, Nishio makes sure that the technology is correct and sound, and capable of solving any Sudoku puzzle his books published so far.

“When you practice, you will be able to recognize the various patterns and strategies,” adding that one must practice in order to absorb and understand the technology, and then develop the expertise in applying it. “There are many Sudoku puzzles and each puzzle requires a different approach and a different mindset,” Nichio explained.

But doesn’t a one-stop solution take away all the fun of trying to solve a puzzle? “The fun is from a different perspective. It is in solving the difficult puzzles in a short period of time, and in managing to unlock the secret of the puzzle. And it’s in being able to solve the puzzles in shorter and shorter periods of time,” he added.

Asked how his book differs from all the other books that also claim to provide solutions, Nichio replied: “We’re talking about Sudoku technology and knowledge. There is more to Sudoku than just a game, as it requires critical thinking, logical reasoning and other mental skills essential to everyday life.” If a person is able to solve any type of Sudoku puzzle using the tools and techniques, that person would have acquired a level of thinking ability that will facilitate the acquisition of knowledge in any disciplines.

The basic premise of solving a Sudoku puzzle sounds simplistic. You must place one number between 1 and 9 in each cell of each block in each of the nine blocks that make up the entire Sudoku grid. Sounds easy? Okay, here’s the twist. You want to place your numbers so that every row and column and individual 3x3 block contains the numbers 1 through 9 but that no one number appears more than once!

So sharpen your pencil and start your addiction! Find out up to what difficulty level you are able to solve. You may consider yourself to have mastered that level when you are able to compete that level within a short period of time. Now, can you beat the world champion?

AdMix: Sudoku Loco

One day, as I browsed through a bookstore, I saw a magazine containing hundreds of Sudoku puzzles, bought one and shared it with a nephew who became hooked.