To enter, readers must complete nine of the 14 differently numbered Sudoku Championship puzzles that will be featured in the Mon-Sun editions of The Independent, between Monday 10 April & Sunday 23 April 2. The completed puzzles must be sent to The Independent Sudoku Grand Master Championship, PO BOX 55705, Independent House, London, E14 1AQ 3 Entries must be received by Friday 28 April 2006. The fastest 100 competitors will be asked to attend the grand final in London, at which the winner will be crowned Britain’s Sudoku Grand Master. He or she will be presented with a specially commissioned trophy and a cash prize of £1,000. To enter the Sudoku Championship of Great Britain, players must complete nine differently numbered puzzles and submit them to The Independent’s Sudoku Championship committee.Once their entries are verified, competitors will be invited to participate in a series of regional heats in cities around Britain, in which they will be asked to complete Sudoku puzzles against the clock. Just make sure you bring your logical knife.COULD YOU BE BRITAIN’S SUDOKU CHAMPION?Today, The Independent launches it’s second Sudoku Championship of Great Britain. Participation is open to all, and the event will enable enthusiasts to pit their skills against each other – and against the clock – in a prestigious national competition, with the opportunity to win the coveted title Sudoku Grand Master of Great Britain.Every day for the next fortnight, The Independent will publish a series of numbered championship Sudoku puzzles.
Sorry, but you’re going to have to slug it out like everyone else. Who could want more?The bad news for everyone else is that he’s keen to defend his British title this year “Any chance of a bye, do you think?” he asks. He has other interests – he hardly had time to savour his triumph because he had to go to a rehearsal with his band.His only regret at winning was being bumped off an appearance on Radio Five Live by the death of Edward Heath. But that was assuaged by an invitation to compete in Hong Kong against the local champion and 1,000 schoolchildren. For this he won the title “King of Sudoku” and “a trophy that looks a bit like the FA Cup”. “I think I’m managing to keep it under control,” he says.Mr Billig is happy in the role of gentleman amateur, politely scoffing at the idea of hiring a trainer.
An economics graduate from the Czech Agricultural University in Prague, the accountant, 31, had already participated in the world championships for the Japanese game Go.This time, she left nothing to chance: her husband, an IT manager, is her coach, leading her through four hours of practice a day Such dedication may not leave her time to get out. Invited to kiss one of the judges as she received her prize, she did her best to stick her tongue down his throat.It may come as relief to readers contemplating entering The Independent’s Sudoko championship this year that becoming one of the Sudokurati doesn’t have to involve dispensing with social skills.Ed Billig, 23, the winner of last year’s competition, seems a perfectly normal, wryly humorous chap, who manages to keep his Sudoku habit down to a relatively modest four puzzles a day in the office (he transcribes police interviews) and a couple on the bus to and from work. (No, he doesn’t have a girlfriend.) Mr Snyder appears to be heir apparent as Sudoku’s godfather, although his clean-cut looks and slicked-back hair do not appear to have endeared him to everyone. In Sudoku terms, he’s a sort of Sampras to the Japanese man’s McEnroe.But the world championship’s surprise package was the winner – the pony-tailed Czech Jana Tylova, the only woman in the top 18. Pipping him to third spot was a Google programmer, Wei-Hwa Huang (a former world puzzle champion), who was so confident he had won in the final round that he was doing high fives with his friends – until it was pointed out he had mistakenly placed identical numbers in the same row. It’s comforting to know it happens at the top, too.Second spot went to a Harvard chemistry postgraduate, Thomas Snyder, 26 , who told reporters he spent 70 hours a week in the lab and most of the rest puzzling. To him, “logic is a knife that kills” and he is best known for inventing the appallingly frustrating Sudoku variation Samunamupure (“sum number place”), or Killer Sudoku.Unfortunately, he seemed to have left his logical knife in its sheath during a final round during in which he let the title slip away.
The fourth-placed contestant, Tetsuya Nishio, looks like a mild-mannered chap but has a reputation as one of Sudoku’s hard men, which he has put to use training many of Japan’s masters. His first published Sudoku grid appeared in September 2004 in New Hampshire’s Conway Daily Sun. But it was only after he gave it for free to UK newspapers – reasoning he’d make money from people downloading his computer program at $14.95 (£8.60) a pop – that the game took off.But being “Mr Sudoku” does not mean Mr Gould is among the quickest solvers: he says he takes an impressive 20 minutes for the hardest puzzles and four minutes for the easy, but that Gaye – his tester – is quicker.For Sudoku’s speed kings (and queen), look no further than the first Sudoku world championship, held in the Italian city of Lucca last month. aah, well, I suppose that would be a fair comment, compared to most people I suppose,” he has said.For six years, Mr Gould worked on a computer programme to write the puzzles. The puzzle, first published as “Number Game” in New York in 1979, had been imported to Japan and renamed Sudoku (“single number”) in 1984 But Mr Gould knew nothing of this. Not speaking Japanese, he thought it was some kind of crossword.As a lifelong puzzle addict, he was intrigued, buying the book to take with him on a flight to Naples, where he was going to meet his wife Gaye, a professor of linguistics.