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Open Qualifying for US Sudoku Team Philadelphia, USA (March, 2010) The 5th World Sudoku Championship will be held April 29 - May 2, in Philadelphia. All WPF member countries have been invited via email to participate. If your country has not received this invitation, please contact the organizers via Contact page. Competition puzzles will be designed by Wei-Hwa Huang and Thomas Snyder, both former US Sudoku champions and co-authors of Mutant Sudoku (see sidebar). Open qualifying for five spots on the US Team will take place on Sunday March 28, starting 1pm (EDT). Please register if you are interested in participating. |
Mutant Sudoku You'll be hard-pressed to find a standard sudoku grid in this creative collection of puzzles from Thomas Snyder and Wei-Hwa Huang. Check out the Team USA Bookstore.
Puzzles from the For a collection of
Sudoku puzzles from WSC2 and other selected puzzle books, check out the
Puzzles by Nikoli, Japan Selected puzzles for the USPC and the Sudoku National Championship are provide by Nikoli, Japan. Daily puzzles,books and magazines are available at 2010 Google It's never to early to register for the next U.S. Puzzle Championship! Other News See the News Page for other news reports regarding the World Puzzle Championship and Team USA, and the World Puzzle Federation web site. |
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Team USA 2nd place in 18th World Puzzle Championship
Antalya, Turkey (October, 2009) 23 team participated in the 18th World Puzzle Championship, and for the first time at a WPC, a team playoff was used. The head-to-head event was intriguing, but did nothing to change the preliminary rankings, leaving Germany to take it's third title in seven years. Team USA placed 2nd, and Japan came in 3rd. The top 12 individuals also competed in a playoff. Ulrich Voigt held a dominating lead going into the finals and could not be denied his 7th title in ten years. Team USA had two members in the playoffs, with Thomas Snyder coming in 7th, and Wei-Hwa Huang coming in 12th. Not making the playoffs, Zack Butler finished 20th, and Roger Barkan in 24th. More information at the WPC18 web site.
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Tammy McLeod Wins 3rd Sudoku National Championship
Philadelphia, USA (October
24,
2009, updated Nov 23) Eugene Varshavsky also competed in the on-stage finals, but filled in only three digits during eight minutes of solving, calling into question the validity of his qualifying round performance. Weeks later, championship officials gave Eugene the opportunity to re-solve a number of puzzles in a controlled environment, but he again failed to solve in a way consistent with his qualifying time. Championship officials had no choice but to disqualify him, and as a result Chris Narrikkattu was awarded third place and the $3,000 prize. Visit Philly.com/sudoku for the full official tournament results. The U.S. Sudoku National Championship is sponsored by the Philadelphia Inquirer, and hosted by Will Shortz. The organizers are indebted to Stefan Heine for providing the tournament puzzles, and to Jason Zuffranieri and Tom Collyer for test-solving. |
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Thomas Snyder Wins 4th Consecutive Participants representing 40 countries besides the United States submitted answer sheets, and the test will be used to help select WPC team members for Canada and Italy. The top Canadian scores were: Byron Calver (256), and Derek Kisman (220). The top Italian scores were: Sebastiano Schillaci (230) and Michele Nessi (195). The top international scores were: Mehmet Murat Sevim of Turkey (310), Hideaki Jo of Japan (262, at 2-4:30am!), and Steven Barge of the UK (197). Test problems, solutions, statistics, and individual scores are available at the 2009 Summary Page. Thanks go to the puzzles designers: Ken Duisenberg, Aziz Ateş, Erich Friedman, Craig Kasper, Shawn Kennedy, Patrick Merrell, Nick Baxter, Nextoy LLC, Nikoli, Ed Pegg Jr., Moshe Rubin, Dave Tuller, and Adam R. Wood. |
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2009 World Sudoku Championship
Žilina, Slovakia (April 26, 2009) The US Team had a rough time at the World Sudoku Championship this year, with seemingly nothing going their way, and immediately looking forward to 2010 when the US will host the event in Philadelphia. During the first day of competition, two-time champion Thomas Snyder led the field. Current US champion Wei-Hwa Huang, and 2008 standout Jason Zuffranieri both must have had a little jet lag and failed to even qualify for the strangely huge 36-person playoff. In the semi-final round, Thomas did as well as anyone else, solving three of the four tough puzzles. But along with seven other top-10 qualifiers, he failed to make the finals, falling victim to ill-conceived tie-breaking rules (it was actually advantageous to stop solving rather than to try to finish all the puzzles, and virtually no credit was given to the ranking in the prior rounds). In the finals, Jan Mrozowski of Poland emerged as the individual champion. In team competition, the US Team had no one to blame but themselves. In a critical all-or-nothing round, they were the only team to finish, expecting to grab the only bonus and a commanding lead. Instead, they had one wrong digit in one of six grids, causing them to fall to a disappointing seventh place overall. The home team from Slovakia won the team championship, edging out Czech Republic and Serbia.
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San Francisco, USA (June 28,
2009) Thomas Snyder continues his dominance of the U.S. puzzle scene by winning his fourth consecutive U.S. Puzzle Championship. Thomas solved 21 of 23 puzzles for a score of 360 out of 400 points. Joining Thomas on the US Team bound for Turkey are Roger Barkan (265), Zack Butler (260), and Wei-Hwa Huang (249). Close behind in fifth place was Dan Katz with 242 points.
