|
Indian Sudoku Championship 2024
11th August
Rialto Hotel, Bengaluru
|
Overview:
LMI conducted 4 online rounds of Sudoku Mahabharat, and invited the top players to the compete at the Indian Sudoku Championship, to select the team to represent India at the World Sudoku Championship 2024 in Beijing, China.
As part of the event, there were two sub-events, the Sudoku Mahabharat playoffs to reward and encourage inexperienced solvers, and a fun team-solving exercise to provide an alternate experience to the individual solving of the main competition.
|
Indian Sudoku Championship:
ISC 2024 had 4 rounds, with a total solve time of 230 minutes. Each round had multiple Sudokus, with points assigned to each Sudoku, which would be awarded if all the digits were correctly filled in that Sudoku. Participants entered this event carrying forward some base points from the online rounds of Sudoku Mahabharat and the WPF Sudoku Grand Prix.
|
Round 1 – The Classic Begins: This round featured Classic Sudoku handcrafted by some of the world’s finest setters. There were 10 Sudokus in all, with a round duration of 30 minutes. Two solvers finished this round, Kishore Kumar Sridharan and Nityant Agarwal, with the latter having 2 minutes to spare. Each of them had a mistake in one of the higher pointers though, which meant they lost some points to get scores of 265 and 266 respectively, while Prasanna Seshadri, who had solved all but a 25 pointer, ended up topping the round with 275 points. All 40 solvers at the final managed to solve at least one Sudoku correctly, with no 0 scores in this round.
Round 2 – The Usuals: This round featured 8 Sudoku variations that were already seen in the online Sudoku Mahabharat rounds. The round duration was 60 minutes, with the Sudokus totalling to 600 points. Nityant and Prasanna solved 6 Sudokus apiece here, but Nityant solved more higher pointers, topping the round with 485 points, 45 more than Prasanna’s 440. Kishore had an off-colour round but still had the third highest score of 340, while Kartik Reddy had a good showing with 320. |  |
Round 3 – Aim for the Target: This round had 9 Classic Sudokus, where 8 of them were connected to a single Target Sudoku. This is a unique round where the linked element of the grids is required to solve them, and the grids can’t be solved individually. The round duration was 70 minutes, with 700 points up for grabs. Along with Kishore, Hemant Malani impressively finished this round with 4 minutes left, which allowed them both to top the round with 740 points including the bonus for finishing early. Nityant finished the round with a minute left for 710 points, while Amit Sowani also managed to finish the round. Prasanna ended up having a relatively poor showing here with just 3 out of the 9 Sudokus solved, for 350 points, causing some shuffling in the top 3.
Round 4 – The Unusuals?: This round had 10 Sudoku variations, with a gimmick where pairs of variations had the same layouts of clues. This didn’t necessarily impact the solving, but it is a nice and unique way to show the creativity in handcrafted puzzles. The round duration was 70 minutes, with the Sudokus totalling to 700 points. Prasanna solved 8 Sudokus in this round, but had a minor error, cutting an expected 585 down to 490. This was still enough to top the round, as Nityant scored 465, and Kishore also made an error to end up with 430. Aashay had a strong showing here with the only other score that went above 400, with 420. |  |
Summary:
Kishore Kumar Sridharan won his 1st Indian Sudoku Championship. The competition had many ups and downs. Nityant Agarwal particularly impressed. Having started 221 points behind Kishore on the day due to base points from online rounds, Nityant ended up finishing just 70 points short. Prasanna couldn’t recover after the mishap in round 3, rounding up the podium at third place. Harsh Poddar finished 4th, to finish off the A-Team spots for the World Sudoku Championship.
With his impressive showing, Nityant was also the best Under-21 solver at the event. Puwar Dhruvarajsinh and Puwar Krutika continued showcasing their potential at the ages of 13 and 8 respectively, rounding up the podium in the U-21 category and finishing at 8th and 24th respectively in the overall rankings.
The Above-50 category saw a total of 9 solvers, with Neeraj Mehrotra emerging with the top ranking among them. Anuradha Ganesh and K. Ravichandran rounded up the podium at 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
Thematically, the number of female competitors was also 9, with Swati Singh taking the top spot. Close behind her were Pooja Bansal and Anuradha Ganesh at 2nd and 3rd respectively.
LMI extends sincere gratitude to authors Ashish Kumar, Clover, James Peter, Sam Cappleman-Lynes, Sed Holaysan and Wessel Strijkstra, and to all the test solvers, volunteers, etc. who helped put this top-quality event together.
|
Kishore - 1st | 
Nityant - 2nd & Best U-21 | 
Prasanna - 3rd |
| | |
Neeraj - Best A-50 | | 
Swati - Best Female |
| | |
Now, some notes about the remainder of the event.
Sudoku Team solving: While checking went on for the ISC results, as is tradition, a fun mini-event was held. The participants were divided into groups of 3, and given a single Sudoku with 6 boxes outside it with certain variant rules and decorations. These 6 boxes had to be fit appropriately into the Sudoku as part of solving.
The round was a success in terms of communication between participants. The more experienced top solvers were separated to teams containing newer solvers, who could learn from the experience.
Nityant’s team ended up being the first to finish the Sudoku, but multiple teams finished thereafter.
|
Sudoku Mahabharat Playoffs:Once the checking was done for the ISC main rounds, it was time for the Sudoku Mahabharat Playoffs. The Sudoku Mahabharat concept came to be in the year 2015 with a vision to provide a stepping stone to the players who are below the usual qualifiers, and encourage them to go further and become contenders for the team. There are strict eligibility criteria to achieve this end, and the top 3 is decided in a playoff contest based on the rankings in ISC among the eligible participants.
The SM Playoffs have two stages, first choosing the 3rd place contender from among the 3rd, 4th and 5th best eligible solvers from the ISC rankings and then holding another playoff to determine the top 3 rankings.
At the 2024 edition, the 3rd-5th place playoff was contested by Hemant Malani, Puwar Dhruvarajsinh and Harmeet Singh. Dhruvarajsinh, starting at 4th place, won the playoff to advance as the new 3rd seed into the second playoff. Here he faced competition from Kartik Reddy starting at 2nd and Harsh Poddar leading the pack. It was neck and neck between Harsh and Dhruv, with Dhruv solving the first Sudoku fastest but struggling a bit on the next one. Harsh had a slight edge heading into the third and final Sudoku, and made it count by finishing it just seconds before the 20 minute time limit was reached and the playoff concluded.
Harsh Poddar is the 2024 Sudoku Mahabharat winner. Since Dhruv reached the final Sudoku before Kartik, he took the 2nd spot while Kartik finished 3rd.
|
SM Playoffs taking place | | 
Harsh Poddar - SM Winner |
Conclusion:The Indian Sudoku Championship was held successfully and led to the selection of a promising team including Kishore Kumar Sridharan, Nityant Agarwal, Prasanna Seshadri and Harsh Poddar to represent India at the World Sudoku Championships. The event also provided a platform for many other solvers to shine in their respective categories and gave a chance for the Indian Sudoku community to get together and celebrate their shared interest. Here are the full results. |  | |
To see participant feedback and a way to access the puzzles, visit the discussion thread for the tournament, here. Here's to seeing the competition as well as the camaraderie grow in future years!
|
|
Last edited by Administrator @ 8/23/2024 3:06:24 AM.
|
| |
Discussion Thread
