World Sudoku Championship 2016

The 11th World Sudoku Championship (WSC) was held on 17th - 18th Oct, 2016 in Senec, Slovakia.

View Championship Page


Indian Team

The Indian team was selected from the Indian Sudoku Championship 2016 (ISC) and the Times Sudoku Championship 2016 (TSC). We had three complete teams this year.

Pranav was our Under-18 participant, and after a good show at last year's World Junior Championships, he made it to the Top-2 inexperienced solvers of TSC this year.


Preparation
I've been off the grid, primarily due to my work and career aspirations of pursuing Machine Learning, so I didn't have high expectations this year. This might also be my last World Championships as a participant, as I'm one of the organizers for next year's championships in India, after which I'm uncertain of continuing.


Puzzles
The Slovak team have been doing well in recent years, in contests, in authoring, in communicating, and I think a lot of people were expecting these championships to be good fun. And it definitely was. The IB was crisp, rounds were well thought of, themes were really nice.

Retrospectively, the timing of all rounds were spot on, and it was one of my best WSC experiences in the last 8 years.

The puzzles were all well-made, a good mix of easy, medium and hard puzzles, a good variety of standard vs new variants, some really exciting team rounds, and overall it felt like a complete well-balanced WSC. Thumbs up for all the authors and organizers for the excellent event.

I must admit that there were some parts where I felt deja-vu, strikingly similar to some of the ideas we've been discussing for next year's WSC. Well, there's no limit to innovation!


Performance
The Indian team performed average-ish this year. I was the top ranked Indian on 18th, which is our worst 'top rank' in the last 9 years! But as a team, all four of us were ranked in Top-40, which is a first.
Prasanna finished 21st, Rakesh 32nd and Kishore 38th. Rakesh's and Kishore's personal best.

We finished 6th in the team standing, equalling our best team rank in 2014.

The unofficial players: Amit stood 53rd, Gaurav 73rd, Rajesh 76th, Swaroop 85th, Jaipal 93rd, Pranav 94th, Akash 104th and Ashish 141st.

Prasanna has been in tremendous form in the GPs, but had quite a bad WSC this year.
He's doing well in elections too! (Yes, he got elected as a board member in the World Puzzle Federation, but more on that later)


Winners
Jakub Ondrousek (Czech Republic) performed extremely well in the rounds and was on top with a sizeable lead over Tiit Vunk (Estonia) and Kota Morinishi (Japan). The three of them have been consistently topping the WSCs last few years, and this one was no different.

But it was the Estonian who flew through the playoff puzzles and pipped Jakub to take his first title, after finishing runner-up in the previous two years. Hearty congratulations to Tiit! A well-deserved win.
Jakub was second and Kota stood third.

Among the teams, Czech Republic blazed through the playoffs to win it, while the Chinese came in second, with an amazing performance, where three of them were in Top-10 too (let aside the fact that they are all U-18!) and Japan came in third.

View Complete Results


Sudoku GP
I've always enjoyed the GP rounds through the year, but never perform well in them, quite unlike the WSCs. Somehow, it makes me feel I'm more of an offline solver, rather than an online one (Even of the 10 ISCs so far, only 4 were held offline, and those were the 4 I won!).

There was a lot of debate on the new scoring system, and I didn't share my thoughts earlier since I was just uninterested and busy. But, I ended up 14th in the GP, and due to high dropouts in the Top-10, I was invited for the playoffs.

And I decided not to compete. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is, I reviewed my performance and felt I didn't deserve to be in the playoffs. Using some simple normalization, I would lose at least 2 more ranks, which is a fairer position for me. And secondly, the schedule this year had more rounds, and having the GP in between them is just exhausting. Besides the fact that I wanted a decent rank in the WSC if this is my last one, so preferred resting.

I don't want to comment too much on the scoring, but there's no harm in trying new ideas, I'm always in favour of experimenting. Tom Collyer, the Sudoku GP Director, received some slack on this, and I'm not sure its completely fair to him.

It is just my personal opinion and preference that some form of normalization does make a better scoring system. We (LMI organizers) have seen it in the past... we even changed it in the middle of SM and PR, and decided to add normalization after 2 rounds, when we realized it is extremely difficult to curate 8 rounds of 'equal' solving experience.

It remains to see what happens next year. The Sudoku GP Director spot is currently open (Tom stepped down).

Overall, the GPs were still a lot of fun with high-quality puzzles. Thanks to Tom, Hana, Wei-Hwa, all the authors, testers and everyone else who put in effort conducting these year-on-year.

The top-3 in the playoffs were Tiit Vunk (so he won the double), Kota Morinishi and Hideaki Jo. Congrats!


Organization
Kudos to Zuzana Hromcova and the entire Slovak team for hosting this wonderful event. It was smooth, it was punctual, it was lively, it was fun! Thanks a lot!

This year, there were several prizes (and some spot prizes too!), which is generally nice to have.

There was a prize for guessing the 11th place player (being the 11th WSC), and we analyzed the results after two rounds, to choose the most probable twelve people who'd be 11th, distributing the votes among us twelve Indians.
And we bombed it like anything. We ended up guessing the players ranked 9th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 19th, etc. Damn we missed Takuya! :-)


Next Year
Slovakia have set the bar high, and the Indian team will be hosting all you wonderful people next year during the same week (15th - 22nd Oct, 2017) in Bengaluru, India. I look forward to it as much as many of you, and hope it is a successful and enjoyable WSC.

I've got some plans through the year, so, its going to be an interesting next few months and I hope most of them work out as expected. Fingers crossed!

Feel free to write to me: rohanrao88@gmail.com in case of any help/queries/questions regarding next year's event. We'll have our webpage out soon, and the LMI forum is always available and active for other discussions!

And now, back to boring non-puzzle life :-|

P.S. Will be writing an update on WPC by the weekend.

Indian Sudoku Championship 2016

The Indian Sudoku Championship (ISC) 2016 was held on 16th July, 2016 in Chennai.

The championship was an offline event (after three years of having it online), where the top-50 qualifiers of Sudoku Mahabharat were invited. This is the first time the reigning champion did not defend the title. Rishi Puri, who won ISC in 2014 and 2015, has called it quits for his sudoku career.

View Top Qualifiers

Last 3yrs were very exciting competing with Prasanna and Rishi. Its unfortunate that neither of them participated this year since Prasanna, being the best Indian at the World Championships last year, gets a wild card for the national team this year and hence, decided to organize the national event.

I've traditionally done well in offline ISCs... in fact, only 3 of the ISCs were offline (2010, 2011, 2012), and those were the 3 times I won! This year I made it 4/4.


Puzzles
The championship consisted of four rounds. When you have Deb and Prasanna authoring sudokus, you know you're in for a treat. Really nice set of puzzles.

The fourth round of 6x6 sudokus had a fun twist to it, and was well thought of. The timings were perfectly set and the event ran very smoothly.

Those of you who'd like to solve these puzzles can purchase it here (Unfortunately due to certain reasons, they are not publicly available this year).


Results
I'm glad I topped all four rounds and won my fourth ISC title, this one after 4 years!

Rakesh Rai pipped Kishore Kumar for 2nd place as Kishore had a really bad 4th round. Most of the other results were as expected. Akash Doulani and Pranav Kamesh were the top inexperienced players comfortably, and I'm glad they'll finally be making it for their first World Championships.

View Complete Results

The winning trophies were really cool! Custom-made sudokus by Prasanna printed on the trophy with the shapes '1', '2' and '3'. Thanks to Sumit Bothra for getting these made.

Organization
Thanks to Deb Mohanty and Prasanna Seshadri for organizing this event smoothly. Also, a big thanks to Varun, Ezhilarasi, Ashish, Kumaresan, Rakesh, Kishore, etc. and the other folks in Chennai who helped out with the event. It was a big success!

Sudoku Grand Prix 2016

The WPF Sudoku Grand Prix 2016 is here! After successful editions in 2014 and 2015, the 2016 edition consists of eight rounds held across the first seven months.
The top-10 finalists will be invited for the GP playoffs during WSC 2016 (Slovakia).

Due to certain unfortunate incidents, I wasn't able to compete completely in the first two editions of the GP. Well, I'm really hoping to make it this year.
Rishi Puri, the current and two-time national champion, featured in the playoffs in both years while Prasanna Seshadri was in the playoffs last year. With Rishi 'retiring' from active participation, it'll be interesting to see how the GP unfolds for the Indians!

Scoring System
There has been some discussions regarding the new scoring system for the GPs. Historically, normalization of scores for a championship consisting of various rounds has worked well due to the unreliability of having similar rounds in terms of scores and difficulty.
The GPs did use normalization in the previous editions, and it was universally accepted.

I'm not convinced there was a need to go ahead without normalization this year, so it remains to see whether or not it will work. You can find some pros/cons being discussed about the new scoring system on the GP Forum.
Being part of the organizing team of Sudoku Mahabharat / Puzzle Ramayan (which are very similar to the structure of GPs), we had to change the scoring system during this year's rounds, due to the inconsistencies without normalization. So, I'm not particularly in favour of dealing with raw scores.

View Championship Page


Round 3: Czech Republic (4th - 7th Mar, 2016)
Coming soon...


Round 2: Serbia (5th - 8th Feb, 2016)
Ohhh no. I bombed this round. Just had a bad day. And another submission mistake made it worse. So, that makes it two bad rounds out of two :-(

Puzzles were nice, nothing extraordinary. Many of them turned out to be Converse-like variants, which incidently comes right before the Converse round of SM, so good practise there.


Round 1: Netherlands (8th - 11th Jan, 2016)
Not the start I was hoping for. Had a rough solve, got stuck up time and again. To make things worse, I had one submission incorrect.

Tiit finished the set in just less than an hour, which is phenomenal. Prasanna finished the set in 79mins putting him in 5th. I finished in 84mins, but the mistake dropped me to 14th place.
The puzzle quality was excellent, as expected from the Dutch authors.

I hope this is the round that gets discarded!

World Sudoku Championship 2015

The 10th World Sudoku Championship was held on 11th-15th Oct, 2015 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Championship Page
Download Instruction Booklet

The Indian Team was selected from the Indian Sudoku Championship and Times Sudoku Championship 2015, where Prasanna Seshadri, Rishi Puri, Kishore Kumar and I form the A-Team.

Prasanna Seshadri, Rishi Puri, Kishore Kumar and Me

"We are the best four players of the country, as we finished in the top-4 of ISC as well as TSC. It looks like a strong team with Prasanna and Rishi in good form, being finalists in the Sudoku GP and Kishore being consistent among the Indian circuit.

The Indian team stood 6th last year, which is the best performance ever, and I hope we can break into the top-5 this year. That's our goal and its probably our best shot at it in the near future, since, Rishi is not planning to continue being an active participant from next year. It will be hard to find a replacement for someone at Rishi's level, but we'll hope for the best.

On a personal level, I'm aiming for a Top-10 finish. Its been a disappointing couple of years, where I stood 14th last year and 16th the year before.
Haven't been in the best of forms lately, with some career changes and travelling going on, but hoping to give my best and make India proud!"


All of us travelled separately. Prasanna and Rishi had to reach one day before for GP Playoffs, I was flying from Mumbai, Rishi was flying from Hyderabad and Kishore was flying from Greece. Well, so much for 'best team'.

The instruction booklet just looked like a shadow of WSC 2014 in London. Very similar structure and rounds and format. I was surprised, but then realized that the main authors of WSC are Richard Stolk (Netherlands) and Yuhei Kusui (Japan) and they might've been called at the last moment to save the event.

Being a big fan of Stolk's sudokus, I was looking forward to the championship.

The rounds and points (My points vs Highest points) were as follows:

Round 1: Classics (265 vs 330)
Classics! This round went fairly smooth, I solved in reverse, attacking the hard ones first and it paid off. I scored 265 and thought that is a good start.

Round 2: Assorted (410 vs 485)
Assorted sudoku variants. That's when the aroma of Richard started. Beautiful sudokus, enjoyable round and I did well.

Round 3: Assorted (395 vs 700)
This was a bad round. I broke Inner Frame and Sum Frame, and was generally slow in a couple of other puzzles. It broke my flow and I dropped a few places.
I spent far too much time on Max Triplet (which was an excellent puzzle).

Round 4: Straight (265 vs 285)
It was expected to be a simple puzzle. It was nice, mostly got solved using row and column non-repetition. Traditionally, I've done well on such rounds (reminded me of the WSC 2012 where the Overlapping round got me into the playoffs), and I'm glad I could finish it fairly smoothly.

Round 5: Assorted (640 vs 750)
The big round! I've messed up the big round in the previous two WSCs and I really really wanted this time to be different. It was. I solved in a very nice flow, cracking one sudoku after another, without a glitch. I got a Classic wrong at the end, but still, it was a solid score, that boosted me up a few ranks.

Round 6: Assorted (375 vs 465)
The dreadful round of irregular variants. It was surprisingly good. I took the safe way, solving the easy and medium ones and leaving out the hard ones. Worked. And worked well.

So, that was the end of the Individual Rounds for Day-1. When the results came out, it was a pleasant surprise to see myself in a solid 5th position. I felt I was closing in on my dream to get into the top-5 this year.

Round 7 (Team): Relay
The team round was interesting. Sudokus were nice, and we were hoping to finish the round. Kishore and Rishi got stuck up on the Irregulars. Rishi gave up on his and Kishore didn't manage to finish his either. Prasanna had to guess on his last grid (since Rishi's Irregular relay didn't come through) which went wrong.
And to make it worse, I left two cells of Extra Region as pencilmarks, thus losing chunks of points :-(

The Great Indian Team Round Debacles continue... year after year.

Round 8: Zodiac (275 vs 625)
Ahh, feel like kicking myself. This was the only big round on Day2, and even with a mediocre performance I would've maintained my top-10 position. But it was not to be. I broke two Arrow sudokus during the round and was never able to recover from that. To make things disastrous, I swapped 6 cells in the highest pointer - Gemini, which screwed my round completely, and I fell way below 10th.

Such a disappointment. We were on track to see two Indians in the playoffs for the first time, but I messed up. Thankfully, Prasanna maintained his calm and managed to be joint 8th before playoffs.

Round 9: Multi Sudoku (140 vs 170)
I was feeling so low... and fortunately this was a low scoring round. I felt like my hands were moving in slow motion during the solve, but it wasn't too bad at the end.

So, that completed the Individual rounds of WSC 2015. I finished 14th (same rank as last year), and certainly could've done better. Maybe next year.
But that also adds to me being in Top-20 in the last 6 WSCs. Only once in Top-10 :-(

Prasanna finished 8th and made it to the playoffs, so there was something to look forward to.

Round 10 (Team): X-Killer
This was a round that most teams were looking forward to. But the organizers cancelled it due to technical issues.
Disappointing, since we had practised this well. In fact, we hosted the practise set as a contest on LMI: X-Killer
Wonderful sudokus by Deb Mohanty.

Round 11 (Team): Fractal
With our first team round going bad and second being cancelled, we had to do well on this one. It was a nice simple linked multi-sudoku, where each of us started solving from the four corners and came to the centre. We finished fairly quickly, but... The Great Indian Team Round Debacle hit us again! We swapped two digits in Kishore's corner, lost 'a lot' of points, including all the bonus.


Playoffs
Nice to see Prasanna Seshadri in the playoffs, we had an Indian there after my playoffs in 2012. He surely is a crowd-entertainer with a phenomenal performance in the playoffs first leg where he finished first among the four, thus taking him into the second leg and guaranteed 7th place.
The second leg was hard, with Bastien in 4th and having a time advantage. Bastien managed to win the leg to join Kota, Tiit and Jakub for the final leg.

Well, the same four finalists of WSC 2014 battle it out again in WSC 2015. Kota having a big lead and time advantage, raced through the playoffs, winning his second WSC crown on the trot. Tiit came in second and Jakub third, all as expected. Playoffs wasn't really exciting.
Congrats to Kota, Tiit, Jakub for the podium finishes.

Download Complete Results

Tiit Vunk (Estonia), Kota Morinishi (Japan), Jakub Ondrousek (Czech Republic)

So, Prasanna finishes 7th, which improves on my best Indian rank of 8th at the WSC. Congrats to him and this made Rishi's (so-called) last WSC memorable. Rishi finished a disappointing 38th and Kishore did well on his debut with 47th.

A-Team
7th - Prasanna Seshadri (2825)
14th - Rohan Rao (2765)
38th - Rishi Puri (1950)
47th - Kishore Kumar (1748)

B-Team and UN-Team
Rakesh Rai (1890)
Amit Sowani (1845)
Jaipal Reddy (1509)
Swaroop Guggilam (1287)
Gaurav Kumar Jain (1185)
Puneet Goenka (900)

Team India finished 9th. This is bad, considering we have been in Top-8 for the last four years. Something to dwell upon and improve.

Thanks to Richard Stolk, Yuhei Kusui, Deyan, Galya, all the other organizers and volunteers for conducting this WSC. Puzzles were fantastic, hall and seating was comfortable and overall a great experience.

Lets hope the WSC 2016 in Slovakia proves to be bigger and better. And I really hope the Indian team breaks newer and more records next year.

And guess what? India won the bid to host the World Championships in 2017! So, hoping to see you all in Bengaluru in two years time!

Sudoku Mahabharat 2016

The online rounds of Sudoku Mahabharat 2015-2016 have ended! This is a national level event aimed at encouraging sudoku solvers of India to participate and compete with the top solvers to gain experience and improve competition in the years to come.

NOTE: This event serves as a qualifier to participate in the Indian Sudoku Championship 2016

The championship consisted of 8 online rounds (Aug-2015 to Mar-2016) from which the top solvers will be invited to participated in the national finals.

Championship Page

National Finals
The finals will be held on 17th July, 2016 in Chennai.

View Finals Page


Online Top-10
1. Rohan Rao - 600.0
2. Kishore Kumar - 529.6
3. Rakesh Rai - 517.8
4. Jayant Ameta - 468.3
5. Jaipal Reddy - 441.8
6. Amit Sowani - 435.1
7. Suvarna - 413.6
8. Gaurav Kumar Jain - 406.59. Rajesh Kumar - 397.2
10. Shaheer Rahman - 383.3

View Complete Results

P.S. Prasanna's name is removed from list since he has a wild card for the WSC next year on being the best Indian performer at the WSC this year.


Round 8: Irregular (12th - 14th Mar, 2016)
Authors: Akash Doulani, Amit Sowani and Gaurav Kumar Jain
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Smooth ending. Really good set of sudokus considering a majority of them were authored by first-time author Akash.

Overall, a good end to SM and I'm glad I was able to top every round from the eligible participants.

The Top-10 look more-or-less as I was expecting except for 7th place Suvarna (don't know who she/he is), but looking forward to a grand national finals in Chennai in mid-July.


Round 7: Converse (12th - 15th Feb, 2016)
Authors: Harmeet Singh and Rakesh Rai
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I started badly, struggling on the Average sudokus... Took 11 minutes for the 6x6 and 13 minutes for the 9x9. But from there, it went really smooth and was able to cover up some lost time. I finished the set in 67mins, ahead of Prasanna in 84mins.

Really good performance by Shaheer Rahman, who gets his first podium in SM, scoring 84 points.
We have a newcomer 'Suvarna' in 2nd place with 88 points, who also enters the overall Top-10, quite an unknown player and it remains to see how she will perform at the national finals.

Well, since the final score is Best 6 out of 8 rounds and having topped 6 rounds, I will have a perfect score of 600 irrespective of the outcome of the last round. I can't say I wasn't expecting this, with Rishi's and Prasanna's absence, but its good to have achieved it.


Round 6: Twisted Classics (9th - 11th Jan, 2016)
Author: Rajesh Kumar
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This went well. Had a couple of minor stumbles, but overall it was a smooth solve. The test was quite easy, especially compared to some of the previous rounds.

I completed the set in 41mins. Kishore finished in 58mins and Rakesh in 63mins.
I must mention a standout performance by Hemant Malani, who is one of our Sudoku Champs toppers, who finished the set in 80mins, ranking him 7th among Indians, which places him above some of the regular experienced folks. Hope to see some more strong performances like this in the future.

Its nice to see many Indians completing this set and a better participation level.

Now with 6 rounds completed, the top-10 look more-or-less stable, with few changes expected after the last two rounds.


Round 5: Outside (14th - 16th Nov, 2015)
Author: Rishi Puri
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I was on a good streak before this contest, with some of my best performances in LMI puzzle test and Fed Sudoku. Unfortunately, it didn't continue here. I started well, but then broke the 9x9 Skyscraper. It was hard to find the error, so I just erased and started again. Lost over 10mins here.

I made mistakes while solving a 9x9 Classic too. And the icing on the cake was when I submitted the first 6x6 Classic incorrectly. And it drove me mad that I had to restart it twice to finally solve it correctly. I know I don't like 6x6, but what was wrong with me?

Overall, the participation was low. I still managed to finish the set in 76mins and be the top Indian after Prasanna, who finished in a great time of 62mins. Rakesh and Kishore missed out on a couple of sudokus but were not far behind.

With that, the top-10 remain the same with a couple of swaps.


Round 4: Math (14th - 16th Nov, 2015)
Author: Rohan Rao
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Congrats to Prasanna for a very good score and to Kishore for topping my round among the eligible Indians. Jaipal and Rajesh were 2nd and 3rd with their strong performances. Nice to see them back among the top.

I really enjoyed creating this set and personally liked it much better than most of the other contests I've authored on LMI.
There is some feedback on the sudokus being hard. Yes, it was intended and since the scoring system has changed to normalize the points, tests can have varying difficulty without much effect on the score distribution.

The GroupSum 6x6 was my favourite of the set while the GroupSum 9x9 and Equal Product 9x9 were the hardest puzzles.

I'm glad most solvers enjoyed the round and its delighting to see close to 350 participants worldwide and over 100 Indians.


Round 3: Odd-Even (24th - 26th Oct, 2015)
Authors: Ashish Kumar and Swaroop Guggilam
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I finished the set in 46 minutes. It was one of my smoothest solves on LMI. I started slowly, taking 13 minutes for the Odd-Event Count variants, but after that it was brisk.
So far, 3/3. Next SM Round is authored by me.

Wonderful sudokus by Swaroop and Ashish. I must mention that I loved the Quadro 9x9. Fantastic sudoku by Swaroop. Odd or Even 9x9 and Odd Sum 9x9 were good too.

Congrats to Prasanna, Rakesh, and Jayant for the other top Indians. A below par performance by Kishore who finished 6th among Indians.


Round 2: Neighbours (12th - 14th Sep, 2015)
Authors: Aditi Seshadri and Prasanna Seshadri (P.S. - They are not related :-) )
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I finished the set in 52 minutes, made a small mistake in Touchy 6x6, which I was quickly able to correct. It was my best online contest this year.

Wonderful sudokus by Aditi and Prasanna. I loved the Touchy 9x9, Quadruple 9x9 and Repeated Neighbours 9x9. Touchy was just fantastic for rule usage whereas Quadruple had a slightly different rule which turned into a very nice variant.

The set was a little harder than SM1, but had very interesting set of sudokus.

Congrats to Jayant for completing in 59 minutes. I think this is one of his strongest performances in a sudoku contest. I hope his form continues. Kishore completed in 73 minutes to take the 3rd spot among the Indians.


Round 1: Standard (22nd - 24th Aug, 2015)
Author: Deb Mohanty
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I finished the set in 49 minutes, stumbled slightly in a couple of grids, but overall it was a smooth solve.

Nice set of sudokus, but it didn't give that 'Deb' feeling :-)
A fun solve though.

Congrats to Kishore who finished the set in 52 minutes and a shocking performance by Prasanna who finished in 64 minutes. He certainly messed up, but we all have our bad days. Rishi, the fourth member of our Indian team at WSC has quit from sudoku solving and tested the set. Its sad to hear that, but I hope he continues to help LMI and the puzzle community in India.

Times Sudoku Championship 2015

The Times Sudoku Championship will be held in July/August. This championship will select four players who will be sponsored to represent India at the World Sudoku Championship 2015 (WSC).

Note: This will be the 'sponsored' team for the WSC. The main A-Team that will represent India for the WSC has been selected from the Indian Sudoku Championship 2015 held last month.

--- Rishi Puri, Prasanna Seshadri, Kishore Kumar and Me are in the A-Team ---

Read Rules and Regulations

The schedule is as follows:

Regional Round in Delhi (12th July, 2015)
Regional Round in Mumbai (12th July, 2015)
Regional Round in Chennai (19th July, 2015)
Regional Round in Bengaluru (26th July, 2015)

National Finals in Mumbai (August, 2015)

Top-3 players from each regional round will be selected for the National Finals. Last year's TSC winners (Prasanna, Rishi, Sumit and Me) get wild cards for the National Finals.


Mumbai Regionals (12th July, 2015)
Who better to take the Mumbai crown than Tejal Phatak! Congratulations for finally making it on the Mumbai podium! Congrats to Prabha Joshi and Jaykumar Patel for qualifying too. See you all during the finals!

Read the Mumbai Article

The regional rounds in Mumbai and Delhi will be held simultaneously on 12th July. I won the Mumbai regionals last three years. Since I have a wild card this year and so does Prasanna Seshadri, its an open door for newcomers. I have no idea who could be in the top-3 unless someone is planning to travel from another city, maybe Tejal.

Delhi Regionals (12th July, 2015)
Delhi results are not surprising. Congrats to Akash Doulani, who has been in good touch lately, followed by Rajesh Aggarwal and Ritesh Gupta. Lets lock horns at the finals!

Read the Delhi Article

The regional rounds in Mumbai and Delhi will be held simultaneously on 12th July. Among the top known solvers of India, I expect Akash Doulani and Ritesh Gupta to qualify from Delhi (if they participate). Maybe Himani Shah, who's not been in the sudoku circuit recently or even Dileep Singh.


Chennai Regionals (19th July, 2015)
Chennai results were as expected too. Congrats to Rakesh Rai and Kishore Kumar for their consistent performances at the sudoku circuit, and Pranav Kamesh for coming in third. Looking forward to the finals!

Read the Chennai Article

I'm expecting and hoping Rakesh Rai and Kishore Kumar qualify from Chennai, they've been among the top solvers of India in recent times. There are some upcoming names from Chennai, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a new name in the top-3 this year.


Bengaluru Regionals (26th July, 2015)
The Bengaluru regionals is going to be a cracker! There are many potentials players who could make it in the top-3 this year. Some usual suspects are Rajesh Kumar, Harmeet Singh, Kunal Verma, Jayant Ameta, Gaurav Kumar Jain, Zalak Ghetia... and some more who's names are not on the top of my head! I would've loved to be there and see you guys battle it out, but unfortunately, I'm in Mumbai over the weekend.
Good Luck and may the best-3 qualify!

Indian Sudoku Championship 2015

The Indian Sudoku Championship 2015 was held online on 28th June, 2015.


Information
View Championship Page

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View Results

The top-4 from ISC will represent India at the World Sudoku Championship (WSC) 2015, which will be held in October. There will be a separate event Times Sudoku Championship (TSC) conducted later by TOI and LMI to sponsor four players for the WSC.

Yes, its a little complicated (with a 2-experienced + 2-inexperienced rule being enforced in TSC this year), but I'll come to that later once TSC is announced. Right now, its more about practising for this Sunday, enjoying the afternoon solving some wonderful sudokus (like its always been during ISC) and crowning the national champion.


Personal
I've finished in the top-3 of ISC for the last 5 years and hoping to do the same this year too. Its going to be a tough and interesting contest battling it out with Rishi and Prasanna, who have been in great form recently.

There are many other good contenders who have the potential to make it to the team this year. Let's hope we have the best team that will get India into the top-5 in the World!

Good Luck to all participants!


Results
View Complete Results

Congrats to Rishi Puri, for retaining the National Title with a impressive performance of completing all sudokus in 97mins, to Prasanna Seshadri, who's been in top form, for completing all sudokus in 112mins and to Kishore Kumar, who has missed the top-4 closely last couple of years, for finally making it.

I finished all sudokus in 119mins, making me 3rd.

Really nice set of sudokus (as usual), and it was an enjoyable contest. Thanks to Deb and all the authors for organizing another successful ISC.

Even though Kishore completed 26 / 27 sudokus, it was good enough to get him into 4th place. I'm really happy he's on the team after narrowly missing out last year.

So, Rishi, Prasanna, Kishore and me. I think this is a strong team, definitely the best 4 sudoku solvers in India today and hope we can get India into the top-5 this year!


Practise Sudokus
I'll upload some practise sudokus as and when I get time. Feel free to comment if you want any particular sudoku type to practise, I'll try creating some.

Here's are some sudokus that I created for practise.

Shape Sudoku (using colours instead of shapes):

Filler Sudoku:

Links to some more practise sudokus:

Triomino Sudoku (Ashish Kumar)
Triomino Sudoku (Prasanna Seshadri)
True Or Lie Sudoku (Rishi Puri)
Search-9 Sudoku (Rishi Puri)

LMI Forum (Links to practise puzzles are generally shared)

You always have Google for more :-)

Unlucky 13

I authored a Sudoku contest Unlucky 13 on LMI. It was held from 1st - 6th April, 2015 and consists of 13 sudokus to be solved in 65 minutes.

View Championship Page

Download Instruction Booklet
Download Puzzle Booklet
Password is LuckyYou

View Forum

View Results

"13 is my favourite number and I created this themed test in late-2014 during some easy days at work. Incidently, this is also the 13th test I'm authoring at LMI. Lot of special moments and memories along the way... and I hope players enjoy this set and make it a success!"

Congrats to Jan Zverina, Hideaki Jo and Jakub Ondrousek for the top-3 overall players.
Congrats to Prakhar Gupta, Kishore Kumar and Rishi Puri for the top-3 Indian players.

"Good artists copy, great artists steal" - Pablo Picasso.

Few months back, a couple of my friends created some sudoku variants and asked me to test solve them. It was their first try at creating sudokus and they did quite a decent job, since they were all unique. Only problem was, all the variants could be solved like Classics without having to use the variant rule and I had a hearty laugh while solving them. For example, there was an Odd Even Sudoku with 42 givens... a Non-Consecutive Sudoku with 33 givens... etc. :-)

That's how the idea was formed for this test. If I enjoyed it so much, maybe other solvers would enjoy it too, in its own humorous way. It was subtle April 'fooling', unlike last year's total surprise (which was awesome in its own way). Thanks to Deb Mohanty and Prasanna Seshadri for test-solving and other inputs and 'contributions'. I'm happy many players were able to complete the test and get the bonus, it was intentionally left longer and the difficulty such that a large portion of solvers would finish.

Thanks for all the messages, and hope to see some more exciting Sudoku solving in the months to come! :-)

Sudoku Mahabharat 2015

During my trip to London, UK for the World Sudoku Championship 2014, the Indian team had a very entertaining dinner just before the WSC finale and prize distribution. When you sit at a table with Deb, Jaipal, Jayant, Prasanna, Rishi and Swaroop, there's bound to be some fun. Kunal was lost somewhere and Sumit had left to meet some relatives in London. Well, they certainly missed a lot of fun.

During the humorous discussions, we touched upon the topic of creating some more enthusiasm among sudoku solvers in India. It is certainly true that Prasanna, Rishi and me have been the top players in India and people tend to lose motivation knowing its hard to beat us and make it to the team. This was the sixth consecutive year I've been in the India A-Team, and though the top players have been performing extremely well at the World Championships, there was a need to do something more for the players who have potential of becoming the top solvers of India some day. And thus, Sudoku Mahabharat was born.

The idea suddenly hit Deb that we should conduct some sort of national event in India, but more to encourage new players and potential players to participate, win and get a feel of being and performing at the top-level. The idea was discussed and we came up with this event.

Read more about the rules, eligibility, schedule and format of Sudoku Mahabharat 2014-2015

Six of the top players: Jaipal, Prasanna, Rishi, Sumit, Swaroop and me won't be participating, in fact, we'll be organizing the event. This would give some of the upcoming solvers a chance to win this event and hopefully be a part of the Indian team soon.

Episode 1: Standard Variants by Rishi Puri
Dates: 20th-22nd September, 2014
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View Results

Episode 2: Irregular Variants by Rohan Rao
Dates: 18th-20th October, 2014
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View Forum
View Results

Episode 3: Odd-Even Variants by Deb Mohanty
Dates: 15th-17th November, 2014
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Download Puzzle Booklet
View Forum
View Results

Episode 4: Outside Variants by Rakesh Rai
Dates: 20th-22nd December, 2014
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View Forum
View Results

Episode 5: Math Variants by Prasanna Seshadri
Dates: 17th-19th January, 2015
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View Forum
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Episode 6: Neighbours by Rajesh Kumar
Dates: 21st -23rd February, 2015
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Episode 7: Math Variants by Swaroop Guggilam
Dates: 21st-23rd March, 2015
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Download Puzzle Booklet
View Forum
View Results


Whether you're a beginner, regular or pro, whether you're 17yrs, 31yrs or 67yrs, whether you're an Indian or not, this is a chance for you to participate (even for fun!) and solve some different interesting sudokus created by some of the best sudoku creators in India. There is something for everyone to enjoy! Who knows, maybe you can be the one who wins the Sudoku Mahabharat !

World Sudoku Championship 2014

The 9th World Sudoku Championship was held in London, UK in August, 2014.

Official Website

The Indian Team for the WSC were the winners of the Times Sudoku Championship: Prasanna Seshadri, Rishi Puri, Sumit Bothra and me.

Prasanna, Rishi and me were in the team last year as well, and we secured 15th, 28th and 16th rank respectively, so, we were hoping to do better this year, in the individuals as well as the team (India were 7th last year). We had a B-Team too, Swaroop, Jaipal, Jayant and Kunal.

I've been on a long break from solving puzzles, but after ISC, I decided to prepare for the WSC. I received a jolt with a pathetic TSC performance, but I was glad I made mistakes in TSC, rather than ISC and hopefully WSC.

When the WSC IB was released, I was a little disappointed. And after the WPC IB was released, I spent all my time in preparing for WPC. Well, so much that I organized the WPC (World Practice Championship) on LMI.

So, what was wrong with WSC? Nothing wrong, it was just that the WSC looked a little bland. All the usual variants, some repetition among types, no hard Classics and nothing specifically to practice or prepare for. The rounds felt easy-ish and finish-able, and it did turn out that way.

Round 1 was good, I missed a couple of low-pointer Classics.
Round 2 was bad. I messed up the Surplus, missed the Killer (and later had a terrible error in Diagonal).
Round 3 was good, just missed the Max Triplet.
Round 4 was excellent, just missed the Inequality (and later had a single cell error in a Classic).
Round 5 was ok, got stuck at Killer Pro and lost some time, but managed a decent score.
Round 6 was a round I was dreading, and I didn't do well. Wasted time on the Toroidal that went wrong towards the end. Few more seconds and I could've finished the Parquet.

Round 7 was a team round, where we finished with bonus. We made a single digit error and lost half the puzzle points and all the bonus :-|
Round 8 was a team round that we royally screwed up. Well, we certainly didn't prepare enough as a team.

So, that was Day-1. I was 12th after the Day-1 results were out. Felt OK-ish. Playoffs chances were bright, but had to do well on the second day.
Prasanna had a terrible Round 5 and Rishi had an average day, pushing them outside the top-20.

I was all set for Day-2.

Round 9 was the 'big round', the longest round with maximum points. During last year's WSC, there was a similar 'big round' on the morning of the second day, which I totally messed up and dropped a few ranks. This year, I didn't mess up, but I didn't do my best either. I broke Clone and Cylindrical. Didn't have time for Between. And later had a mistake in Diagonal. Why can't I solve Diagonal Sudokus this year?
After this round I knew I didn't have any chance for playoffs. So, my goal was to at least improve on last year's rank (16th).

Round 10 was the last round, an overlapping sudoku (similar to last round of WSC 2012), and I like these. I finished WSC on a high by completing this round in 8mins, securing a 12-min bonus. Only 3 players finished better, with a 13-min bonus.

Round 11 was a team round where we had to solve sudokus that were linked. We were confident of doing well in this round since we all had 'different' variants that we liked, and we did well.

So, that was my WSC 2014. I stood 14th. Better than last year, but still a big gap between 10th and 14th. I'm happy I've been performing consistently over the years, with/without practice: My last 5 WSC ranks are: 14, 16, 8, 12, 15

Prasanna never really recovered from that bad round 5, and finished 21st. Rishi's performance was below par, 36th. Sumit made a couple of mistakes towards the end, and dropped out of the top-50, with his 55th.

Our Team was swapping between 7th and 8th over the rounds, and we thought we'll be 7th (again!). But, special thanks to the French team for making a goof-up in the last team round. They lost nearly 2000 points, and that pushed us to 6th, which is India's best team rank ever.

The playoffs format was different from last few years, and even though there were 10 in the playoffs, it was mainly a fight between the top-4. I found this format better than most other WSCs especially since, the worst case scenario for the preliminary toppers is 4th place.

Tiit and Kota were going head-to-head, it was a very close contest between the two, which Kota eventually won. (If he had lost, he would be WSC runner-up for the 4th consecutive year!). On the other hand, Tiit has won the preliminary twice but still can't call himself a WSC Champion. Well... that's life. Maybe next year.
(There was some problem with Bastien's and Jakub's papers during the playoffs, but I think, the organizers found a way out by awarding them joint 3rd place)

Congrats to Kota Morinishi for winning WSC 2014, Tiit Vunk for 2nd and Bastien-Vial-Jaime and Jakub Ondrousek for joint 3rd. They have been performing well consistently and they are the deserving winners.

View the complete WSC Results

Overall, I think this was a much easier WSC than the last few years. I enjoyed the sudokus, the rounds and the experience. The team rounds were fun and easy. The playoffs were good and fair. So, that brings an end to a good and successful WSC, but a little bland one. Yes, the only little negative is that too many standard variants, and some unnecessary repetition. But, I guess that's what made it feel easy and fun :-)

Thanks to UKPA and the UK Organizers and Volunteers for conducting this wonderful WSC. Thanks to all the authors for the enjoyable sudokus and hope to see more in future.

This was my 6th WSC, and it would be in my favourite two.

Beginners Contest on LMI

I authored the July Beginners Contest on LMI. This was a short contest consisting of 4 Classic Sudokus and 4 Sudoku Variants. The difficulty was aimed at ensuring new comers to be able to solve these. The contest was held from 23rd July - 28th July, 2014.

The Sudoku Variants that appeared are Arrow, Diagonal, Extra Region and Trio. You can view some examples here.

You can discuss about the contest on the LMI Forum.

There were totally 295 participants across 38 countries! Congrats to sworls (USA), Mehmet Eren (Turkey) and Vidhya (India) for being the top-3 Beginners. And congrats to Kota Morinishi (Japan), Timothy Doyle (France) and Hideaki Jo (Japan) for being the top-3 Seasoners.

You can view the Complete Results.

Overall from the feedback I received, most participants enjoyed the 'easy' Classics. Among the variants, Trio is always easy, Diagonal was easy, Extra Region was medium and Arrow, well, Arrow was something, right? The Arrow Sudoku was certainly challenging, especially for beginners, but I don't think it was too tough :-)
Maybe you can decide for yourself after checking the solve below:

This is the puzzle:

The 'long' arrow has to be '6'. After that, I admit, the next step is not straightforward. Intuitively, I thought people will target the bottom-left, and there is an opening there. You should get the following pencilmarks using simple addition rules and constraints.

If you look at R8C4, it cannot be '2' or '3' because it will result in the following contradictions for those two arrows. This is not very easy to identify, but filling those two arrows is quite tight.

Hence, R8C4 is a '1'. From here, the solve is smooth.

At this stage, R8C3 cannot be '3', hence it is '2' and that will also enable the other arrow to be completed. There are other ways too, but if you try filling up box 7, along with the arrows, there is just one possibility.

Using Classic rules, you can reach this stage, with those two possibilities for '5' in box-8.

The arrow in box-2 covers R1C5 and R2C6. Minimum in R1C5 is '3' and minimum in R2C6 is '6'. So, it has to be 3+6=9, which will also give you the 5-9 pair in box-8.

The centre box can then be completed, which will give you a few more digits using Classic rules.

The arrow with '7' can only be 1-6 and you get a few more digits.

You have just one arrow left to complete, and eliminating '4' is simple since neither 1+3 nor 2+2 is possible. Using '8', you should get 3+5 and the rest gets solved using simple Classic rules.

So, what do you think now? Tough? Maybe not that much!

This Arrow Sudoku was not very trivial and a lot of solvers struggled on this variant. But I hope you enjoyed solving it at the end.

And, I hope everyone enjoyed the sudokus in general, and thanks for participating in this contest! :-)