A Numbers Game

Sudoku enthusiasts gathered in Beijing for a championship of intelligence and speed By Bai Shi

COVER STORY

A Numbers Game

Sudoku enthusiasts gathered in Beijing for a championship of intelligence and speed By Bai Shi

PUZZLE OPENER:Hana Koudelkova,Director of the World puzzle Federation,delivers a speech at the biSt 2012 opening ceremony on May 18

The Second Beijing International Sudoku Tournament (BIST 2012) crowned a new champion in Fengtai District of Beijing on May 20. Kota Morinishi, a 23-year-old Japanese university student, beat defending champ Jakub Ondrousek from the Czech Republic by one puzzle in the head-to-head final to win the tournament trophy.

Over two days of close competition, the tournament unfolded beyond people’s expectations.

U.S. player Thomas Snyder entered the contest under high pressure as the prior three-time winner of the World Sudoku Championship (WSC). But he came short of reaching the fi nals during the second round on May 19. Spectators then turned their attention to Ondrousek, winner of BIST 2011 and new favorite to take fi rst place.

To the surprise of onlookers, Morinishi solved all six puzzles in just 24 minutes in the fi nal while Ondrousek was stumped by a puzzle that he chose himself. The narrow fi nish gave the tournament an unexpected twist.

It was the first championship title for Morinishi after playing the game for over 10 years, though he had long competed at a high level alongside past champions. Previously,Morinishi won third place at the BIST 2011 and was runner-up of the Sixth World Sudoku Championship (WSC) last year.

“I am happy to win BIST 2012. My dream has come true,” Morinishi said excitedly at the award ceremony. “But I was really nervous in the final. The puzzles are harder than last year. I admit that I was a little lucky this time. As everyone knows, Ondrousek is not easy to beat.”

According to the organizers, 52 Sudoku masters came to Beijing from 14 countries and regions for the BIST 2012 championship.The top 10 competitors were rewarded with bonuses ranging from $600 to $6,000. The tournament also had special awards for participants under the age of 18 and over 40.

Sudoku has been popular all over the world since the 1990s. Today, it is widely played by people in Japan, the United States and many European countries. The current world champi-ons are from Japan, Czech Republic, Germany,Poland and the United States.

Rising popularity

Though Sudoku has not been in China for long,its fans are growing rapidly among the Chinese in recent years. Many newspapers, such as the Beijing Evening News, have printed Sudoku puzzles on their pages to challenge and attract readers. Sudoku games were first broadcast in China nationwide on television during the BIST 2011 in May last year.

Internet sites also play a key role in promoting Sudoku in China. Thanks to the widespread Internet gaming industry, a growing number of people play Sudoku on their cellphones and handheld devices.

According to statistics fromBeijing Leisuremagazine in issue 19, 2012, more than 300,000 Sudoku games were downloaded by Chinese cellphone users last year.

The game is catching on, especially among young people in China. Of the 14 Chinese Sudoku players at BIST 2012, most were teenage students.

Qiu Yanzhe, a 13-year-old middle school student in Beijing, was the youngest Chinese player. Qiu was satisfied with his second-place tournament fi nish in the under-18 bracket.

“I did not expect to win a place,” Qiu toldBeijing Review.

What Is Sudoku?

Sudoku is a puzzle involving numbers with the essence that each number appears only once in each line and row of a grid. The standard Sudoku is a 9×9 grid that consists of nine 3×3 sub-grids. The puzzler needs to place numbers from one to nine into the blanks of a grid to complete the puzzle following certain rules. It is a logic-based game, and doesn’t require a high educational level.

Modern Sudoku first appeared as a game called Number Place in the U.S.magazineMath Puzzles and Logic Problemsin the 1970s. In 1984, it was introduced to Japan and soon became popular among people with the Japanese name “Sudoku.” The game is easy to promote because people can play it with only a piece of paper and a pencil. Many newspapers and magazines have Sudoku puzzles to attract the attention of readers.

Currently, there are many Sudoku competitions around the world. The largest of them is the World Sudoku Championship (WSC), a top-level annual event sponsored by the World Puzzle Federation. The first WSC was held in the city of Lucca, Italy, in 2006.

Qiu has been obsessed with Sudoku since 2009. He said he usually plays two or three Sudoku puzzles a day, adding that “many of my classmates also have been fond of this game.”

“I have gained more experience with Sudoku through the tournament,” Qiu said. “For example, I identified some faults that I often committed. My skills have improved by competing with other top contestants in the game.”

Qiu was the youngest member of the Chinese Sudoku team for WSC 2011. Some onlookers thought he could become a world-class Sudoku competitor.

Many Chinese parents took their children to BIST to watch the games and cheer on competitors.

“I want my son to follow his interest in Sudoku, which is quite helpful for his logic and intelligence development,” said Gerald Gan toBeijing Review. The father and son came to Beijing from Singapore to participate in the game.

Not only for youngsters, Sudoku is also a healthy activity for elderly people. Scientists say playing Sudoku on a regular basis can help maintain a quick and responsive brain in the elderly, preventing diseases associated with aging such as senile dementia.

Liang Yue, 54, the eldest player in the tournament, has played Sudoku for six years.Liang is a marketing manager at a Beijing company specializing in sports. A longtime player of puzzles, Sudoku soon became Liang’s favorite hobby.

“As people do sports for body building,we also need to pay attention to maintaining a healthy brain,” Liang said. “For this purpose,Sudoku is an appropriate game for both young and old. I usually spend two hours doing Sudoku exercises every day, which keeps my brain swift and sharp. I can feel the effects.”

Although Liang did not make it to the fi nals this time, he felt good about his performance in the competition. “Well, as they say,it’s not the winning but the taking part that counts,” he said.

The puzzles used during the tournament also featured unique Chinese designs. Chen Cen, a member of China’s team for the WSC 2009 and 2010, served as chief designer of all puzzles for BIST 2012.

Solving a Non-Consecutive Sudoku

The object of this game is to fill in all the cells with digits one to nine, the digits in a row or a column must not repeat, and also the digits in each square must not repeat. In addition,no adjacent cells(sharing an edge)can contain the same digits.the answer is below.

PUZZLED: Two spectators, the young Chinese player Qiu Yanzhe (left) and his partner, try to solve a complicated puzzle in the fi nal match of BIST 2012

Chinese flair

One distinguishing feature of the puzzles was the Clone Sudoku, which was invented by Chen and her team and appeared in the tournament for the fi rst time.

Clone Sudoku is a pair of identical diagrams in which each one has different rules to solve. For example, one puzzle of the Clone Sudoku requests puzzlers to fi ll odd numbers into the shadow grids, while the other one with the same pattern requests that the numbers of every three shadows should equal 10,said Chen.

“In addition to new puzzles, some Chinese elements, such as Chinese characters and graphs, are used to design the puzzle patterns,” Chen said. “Sudoku is a game of numbers, with no relation to the educational level or cultural background of players.Despite various patterns, all of these new puzzles meet international Sudoku game standards.”

On the whole, the difficulty level and types of the puzzles in this tournament put them at the top echelons of world-class competitions, Chen said.

There are over 40 forms in which the challenging game can be played, including conventional Sudoku, jigsaw Sudoku,killer Sudoku and skyscraper Sudoku.Fortress Sudoku, bridge Sudoku and puzzle Sudoku are the latest types of Sudoku variants introduced to China.

Promising future

BIST has been listed as one of the major world tournaments by the World Puzzle Federation (WPF).WPF is an international organization dedicated to the pursuit of puzzles. It is based in Brno, the Czech Republic.Some senior officers of WPF were invited to supervise the Beijing tournament and research possibilities for Beijing to hold the World Sudoku Championship in the near future.

Puzzle games similar to Sudoku have been played in China for thousands of years.Hetuandluoshuare two ancient Chinese games that challenge players to solve patterns of numbers.

Will Shortz, Chairman of WPF, spoke highly of BIST at the closing ceremony. He said the Beijing tournament was well organized and that China was bound to make great contributions to Sudoku.

Despite its short history, the Beijing tournament is already attracting top masters from around the world. Three world champions, including Snyder, Ondrousek, and Jan Mrozowski from Poland came to join the competition.

“We are so impressed by the Beijing tournament. As people can see, many top Sudoku players are gathered in Beijing for the championship,” said Hana Koudelkova from the Czech Republic, who is a director of WPF.

“Sudoku has become popular in some countries, such as the United States, Germany, the Czech Republic and Japan. But at this moment, I would like to highlight China. This is the second year for Beijing to hold such a high-level annual tournament. We have seen a big move in every aspect of the event,” she said.

At present, Beijing is planning to establish a Sudoku association in the second half of this year, aiming to provide service for a growing number of Chinese puzzlers and lay a foundation to one day host the WPC in China.

Zhang Zhaohui, General Secretary of Beijing Sports Federation, said toBeijing Review, “Beijing takes the lead in China’s Sudoku development. With the establishment of the Beijing Sudoku Game Association, I believe more Chinese Sudoku masters will grow up in the near future as the Sudoku craze is heating up in Beijing.”

DUEL oF Wit: Japanese player Kota Morinishi participates in the fi nal match of BIST 2012