World Puzzle Championship 2011

The 6th World Sudoku Championship and 20th World Puzzle Championship was held on 6th-10th November, 2011 in Eger, Hungary.

Championship Page


This is the first time the WSC and WPC was held as a combined event.

Team India
The national finals of the Indian Sudoku Championship and the Indian Puzzle Championship was held in June 2011. Unfortunately, Ritesh Gupta and Gaurav Korde were unable to attend the WSC, and Harmeet Singh was unable to attend the WPC. So, we were forced to go down the list and finally are team consisted of:

Sudoku Team
Sumit Bothra (Bengaluru)
Tejal Phatak (Mumbai)
Prasanna Seshadri (Mumbai)
Rohan Rao (Mumbai)

Puzzle Team
Rajesh Kumar (Bengaluru)
Rajib Ranjan Borah (Mumbai)
Tejal Phatak (Mumbai)
Rohan Rao (Mumbai)

I was very busy since I had three exams before my trip and have my entire end-semester examinations immediately after my trip, so I spent minimal time for puzzles. Not the best thing to do by a national champion but I was left with little choice.

Last year I stood 41st in WPC and my goal this year was to reach the top 25.


6th November, 2011 - 8th November, 2011
World Sudoku Championship 2011

9th November, 2011
We had a day before WPC began. A city tour to an ice cave seemed exciting but no one was prepared for the surprise that awaited us. Right in the midst of the cave, was held the WSC prize distribution and the photo session!

It was an excellent idea, and it went pretty smoothly. It was nice on the organisers part to do something different of this sort, yet, not overly change things.

10th November, 2011
The World Puzzle Championship 2011 began.


Round 1: In Memorium
It was a pretty ordinary start. Not too good, not too bad. Ulrich Voigt (Germany) outperformed everyone by a good margin.


Round 2: Assorted Puzzles
I started feeling weary and tired. Mental strain was winning over my body. I seemed very slow in a lot of puzzles this round, and I knew this was going to be a bad round. And it was.


Round 3: Cows
I'm usually good at recovering after bad rounds, and this was no exception. The 75-pointer Small Regions was my strength and I'm glad I could crack it. The 'Knight' puzzle had no solution, so I'm sure many players would've been affected.


Round 4: Borderless
Clueless in borderless. I do not know how other players felt about this round, but I had no strategy in this round. I was not comfortable with any variant, and I couldn't see a path other than guesswork in solving these puzzles. I wasn't even confident of getting a non-zero score.

During the first 15 minutes, I kept switching from one puzzle to another, having no progress at all. Then, I found a clue in Easy As ABC (big) and I solved it. That encouraged me to do the smaller one too, and that was all. Palmer Mebane (USA) scored 295. I wonder...


Round 5: Evergreens
I thought this was one round where I could really score well. I was quite disappointed with my performance. Got stuck in a couple of puzzles, made an error in one. On my day, I could've done much much better.


Round 6: Board Games
The concept and puzzles was very nice. It was fun solving them. Lets not talk about the scores though.


Round 7: Naval Puzzles
By this time, all of us were tired and we knew we had no hope to getting into the top 15 in the team rankings. We just solved this for the fun of it.

Not a very good first day for me. I was ranked around 40th at the end of Day 1. Too difficult to get into top 25 from here. I just hoped to better my last year's rank of 41.


11th November, 2011
Day 2 of WPC.


Round 8: Screen Test
This was the best round of WPC. A screen test with animations! Some beautiful puzzles, and great ideas. A huge round of applause followed the test which shows most people enjoyed the test. I hope some players benefitted by the Screen Test I had organised on LMI a week before :-)

In terms of scores, Annick Weyzig (Netherlands) and Jason Zuffranieri (USA) topped with 185 points. I scored 125 and at least I beat Palmer Mebane (USA) and Ulrich Voigt (Germany) in one round!


Round 9: Sprint
Anyone loves Numberlink and Train puzzles? Try solving these ones. These were some tough ones for me. I think some of them were the toughest I've ever solved.

Round 10: Divide And Conquer
I love this puzzle type. And the puzzles that appeared, were simply superb. Even the easier ones, had some fantastic logic to it.


Round 11: Magic 11
This round was themed around the number '11'. It was a good round for me.


Round 12: Hungaricum
A couple of good rounds earlier, but this round was not good. I was floating around the mid-30's and I had a good chance to squeeze myself in the top 30 with one round left.


Round 13: Innovative
Another average round.


Round 14: Best Of
The last individual round. And I messed it up. I got the lowest points among the players in the top 35 and I lost three ranks directly.

Bad finish, but I'm glad I was able to better my rank. I finished 34th.


WPC Playoffs
The format of the playoffs was interesting. Top 10 puzzlers start solving based on a time difference in proportion to their scores. The last 3 players to finish the first 3 puzzles are eliminated. Then the last 2 players to finish the next 3 puzzles are eliminated. Then a fight to the finish with the last 3 puzzles.

Ulrich Voigt (Germany): 7-time World Puzzle Champion. He had a big lead, and would surely win if the playoffs went smoothly.

Palmer Mebane (USA): Beating Thomas Snyder at USPC is no joke. Beating him again at WPC is no luck. I was pretty confident he would make it to the podium.

Thomas Snyder (USA): Performed poorly in Day 2, and lost chunks of points. But, you could never count him out till the end.

The fight for the title had to be between these three players. It was unlikely someone else would win.

Hideaki Jo (Japan), Bram de Laat (Netherlands), Peter Hudak (Slovakia), Nikola Zivanovic (Serbia), Roland Voigt (Germany), Wei-Hua Hwang (USA) and Neil Zussman (UK) complete the top 10. Michael Ley (Germany) finished 7th in the standings, but surprisingly (and unfortunately), he was not in the official team, and hence could not participate in the playoffs.

The playoffs began and it was going like everyone had expected. Ulrich had a one puzzle lead for a major portion and Palmer was catching up quickly. Thomas was unable to catch up to them. It all seemed to going well, and Ulrich reached the second last puzzle, with a one puzzle lead. Then the tables turned. Ulrich kept making a mistake. He was desperately erasing and trying. Palmer on the other hand, completed the puzzle and was the first one to reach the last puzzle. A few minutes later, he had won. Ulrich was still stuck on the puzzle. Now even Thomas reached the puzzle and solved it too! Just a few seconds after Thomas reached the last puzzle, was Ulrich able to complete his second last one. But he beat Thomas in the last puzzle to take silver.


Playoff Results

1. Palmer Mebane (USA)
2. Ulrich Voigt (Germany)
3. Thomas Snyder (USA)


Individual Results

1. Ulrich Voigt (Germany) - 5085
2. Palmer Mebane (USA) - 4769
3. Thomas Snyder (USA) - 4546

Indian Results

34. Rohan Rao - 2898
85. Rajesh Kumar - 1691
91. Rajib Ranjan Borah - 1495
97. Tejal Phatak - 1143

Complete Individual Results


Team Results

1. USA - 20447
2. Germany - 20304
3. Japan - 18026

Complete Team Results

Overall, it was a great championship. The puzzles, the rounds, and the format and organisation was as good as it could get. With WSC and WPC combined, it involves a lot of effort and work, and the Hungarians did a wonderful job.

I am happy with my performance. Top 25 would have been ideal, but at least I was able to improve my rank.

Congrats to Palmer Mebane for winning his maiden WPC title.


Congrats to Thomas Snyder for finishing on the podium in both events. Congrats to Thomas Snyder, Hideaki Jo and Nikola Zivanovic (and Michael Ley) for making the playoffs (top 10) in both events.

It was good meeting up with old friends and new ones, and I hope this trend of WSC+WPC continues (maybe with a little more rest time or little less puzzles!)

World Puzzle Championship 2010

The 19th World Puzzle Championship was held from 24th-29th October, 2010 in Warsaw, Poland.

Official Website

Team India
Rohan Rao (Mumbai)
Rajesh Kumar (Bangalore)
Tejal Phatak (Mumbai)
Aman Pruthi (Pune)

This was my 2nd WPC and I was hoping to improve my 2008 performance (68th).
The complete IB was released quite late, after the four of us were on our flight to Poland. So it deprived us (and others) some precious practise time. The IB had some errors which could have been avoided. I was surprised when those mistakes weren't corrected even in the final print of the IB which every partipant received. That was when this 'Wavy' (As I call it, due to its unpredictable highs and lows) WPC began.

24th October
We arrived in Poland and experienced temperatures of around 8-deg C. It is quite cold for Indians which explains why Tejal wore 5 layers of clothing. After an hour's drive we reached Hotel Kuznia Napoleonska. After relaxing and taking a nap, we went for the Welcome Party. As usual, food was a big problem, especially for me, being a vegetarian. Long live bread, butter and salads!
The Welcome Party was shorter than I expected it to be, nonetheless, it was nice meeting up and chatting with the best puzzlers across the globe.

25th October
We had a city tour, went around few places with a guide and did some shopping. I was fast asleep on the way back to the hotel. Stupid jetlag.
The Q&A session after dinner was long as expected. There were quite a few doubts and incomplete instructions regarding the booklet. I guess the Polish team didn't do their homework well.

26th October
Competiton day! It started off on a high with Round 1 in which Andrey Bogdanov (Russia) was the only player to complete the round. I made an unforgivable mistake in Round 2. I forgot to solve the sudokus. It was on the last page and I completely missed it. I messed up a couple of other puzzles too resulting in a very poor score. I felt a little low after this round and was a bit off-colour throughout the remaining rounds. I managed to coverup some of those points by the end of the day. Anaconda, the deadly team round was a disaster. We had little team coordination and the fact that Aman and Tejal dislike Snake puzzles, made it even tougher for us. We were last in this round :-(
Puzzles were great and fun to solve. Thumbs up from me.
The day ended positively with Vladimir Portugalov (Belarus) and Thomas Snyder (USA) sharing their views and ideas of creating and solving some difficult puzzles. I think this was the best part of WPC 2010.

27th October
The remaining rounds went smoothly for me. No errors, but average performance. Round 10 was an interesting round where players had to make equations using numbers and signs on a ball. I did quite well in this round only to be disappointed later when the round was cancelled due to reasons I would not like to discuss. What a disappointment.
There were a couple of more mistakes in other rounds which ruined the flow of the championship.

28th October
One individual round called 'Screen Test' was supposed to take place with electronic answering machines. It was a huge mess up. Some worked, some seemed to not work, some didn't know whether it worked or no. Result: Back to paper. Waste of time, equipment, etc. It was my first screen test and it opened my eyes. The first few questions, I was too slow and by the time I realised what was happening, it was on Q.10. I put myself together and scored well in the rest of the set. My fault, but I learnt something.
Playoffs got delayed and so did lunch. Team finals were a treat to watch with the USA team racing to victory. However, a Skyscraper Sudoku is more appropriate for a WSC finals.
Individual playoffs were quite disastrous. A wrong puzzle and scrapping of a round is the last thing players want. It seems to be like the first thing that is happening. It also becomes unfair. Mehmet Murat Sevim (Turkey) and Thomas Snyder (USA) had good starts when the round was cancelled. They were unable to make it in the top 4 when the other set was used.
The finals looked more like Ulrich vs Japan rather than a 4-way battle. Three Japanese in top four. Superb performance by team Japan who also took the silver in the team finals. Many would've betted on Ulrich Voigt to add one more to his unmatchable tally and maybe few on Hideaki Jo who was consistently on the top. Ko Okamoto sprang a surprise with his speed in the semi finals and Taro Arimatsu was the cool goer. Surprise surprise! From out of nowhere, Taro Arimatsu cracked all the puzzles in the finals with consistent pace and accuracy to win WPC 2010. Ulrich finished 2nd and Hideaki 3rd.

A short trip and the farewell party wrapped up the event.

Personally, for me WPC 2010 has been a success. I stood 41st and bettered my 2008 rank. I enjoyed the trip and puzzles, though some mistakes could've been avoided.

I'm sure everyone is looking forward for the WPC/WSC combined event in Hungary next year. So am I. Hope it is better and sans errors. Looking forward to Hungary 2011!