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Brainiacs

Prague hosts the 2007 World Sudoku Championship

By Elisabeth Amante Heys
For The Prague Post
March 28th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
On the Czech team this year: Jana Tylová, above, last year's world champ, and young Jakub Ondroušek.
Beginning March 28, puzzlers from 31 countries will flood the Top Hotel in Prague 4 to compete in the Second Annual World Sudoku Championship. For area Sudoku enthusiasts, this event could be likened to the Rolling Stones turning up in a neighborhood karaoke bar. It’s a chance to rub elbows with the pros and perform alongside the glitterati.
“Everyone has their own recipe for playing Sudoku, and it’s interesting to compare your techniques to theirs,” says Vendula Šíchová, a 22-year-old Czech Agricultural University student. She is one of the lucky six team players chosen from an initial throng of 3,000 that turned out for the qualifying competition in Brno, south Moravia, in January. Šíchová will be playing in Prague alongside Jana Tylová of north Bohemia, last year’s world champion. (Each team also includes a nonplaying captain.)
Second World Sudoku Championship

When: March 28–31
Where: Top Hotel, Blažinská 1781, Prague 4
Admission: Free to spectators
For complete schedules and live broadcast of the competition, check www.sudoku07.com

Although the Czech Republic won logical puzzle competitions in 1993, 1994 and 1997, and took last year’s First World Sudoku award, the Americans will put up a strong challenge this year, according to U.S. team captain Nick Baxter.
“If there had been team competition last year, we would have won,” he insists. “And our best people are returning this year.”
Now Playing

The 31 participating countries include: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States. (Egypt and Oman have made inquiries and are expected to participate next year)

The Czech Team
2006 Sudoku World Champion Jana Tylová, 32, north Bohemia; Vendula Šíchová, 22, Prague; Jakub Ondroušek, 15, Brno; Pavel Pellar, 25, Brno; 1993 and 1996 Logical Puzzle World Champion Robert Babilon, 34, Kladno; Petr Nepovím, 34; and team captain Marek Černý, 18, Brno

But Sudoku being what it is, Baxter hedges his bets. “Just like all other competitive events, anything can happen,” he says. “Fortunately, winning is not an absolute priority for us.”
Nonsense, teases event organizer Vítězslav Koudelka. “It’s all about winning,” he says. “It’s about saying, ‘I’m the best in the world.’ ”
For added appeal, this year’s competition allows the best and brightest to compete in both team and individual categories.
Ancient magic
Sudoku is the ubiquitous number puzzle that people play on the metro and everywhere else these days. Although now the rage, it is hardly new.
The game’s long and cobbled history dates to the eighth century and the medical use of Magical Squares. Because no numeral is repeated and the sums of the rows, columns and diagonals are the same, a Magical Square grid appeared to be a powerful talisman. So it’s no wonder ancient Islamic literature recommended its use to relieve the pain of childbirth. Later, in medieval times, a rectangular puzzle called Latin Squares became popular among scientists who arranged the grids to demonstrate mathematical theories.
In modern Sudoku, arithmetic relationships between the numerals are irrelevant. In fact, letters, shapes or colors may be used without altering the game. The attraction of the puzzle is that the rules are simple yet the line of reasoning required to solve it may be complex and the puzzle configuration itself can change. In fact, this weekend’s championship games will include not only the garden variety Sudoku as seen in many newspapers, but Killer Sudoku, three-dimensional Sudoku, Isosudoku and other challenging hybrids.
Battle of the nerds
In its current and most popular form, the game is said to have been developed by U.S. architect Howard Garns, who worked on his “Number Place” puzzles in secret, selling the rights to Dell Publishing in 1979. The puzzle soon gained popularity in Japan under the name Sudoku, which loosely translates to “digits occurring only once.”   
By 2005, Sudoku was being carried in newspapers around the world and had been incorporated into the World Puzzle Championships. But it wasn’t until last year that Sudoku came into its own in world competition. The First Sudoku World Championship was held in Italy, prompting Koudelka, a Czech puzzle publisher, to take up the gauntlet this year. Koudelka claims that Sudoku is a favorite pastime of President Václav Klaus, who is slated to attend the playoffs on Saturday.
During the playoffs, which feature individual competition, players’ grids and moves are broadcast instantly to another room where enthusiasts can watch or play along. Admission to the playoffs and observation at any of the events is free and open to the public.
As they battle it out this weekend, the 186 World Sudoku Championship contestants don’t need a common language or even a common cultural background to win. Sudoku’s neutrality is part of its allure.  
One wonders, though: Do the competitors share a common, well, geekiness?
“We aren’t geeks, but we are definitely nerds,” Baxter says of himself and his fellow puzzlers.   
Koudelka doesn’t mind the characterization either.  Geeks or nerds, he says, “Sudoku wins the war.”

Elisabeth Amante Heys can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com


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