Indian Puzzle Championship - 2025

Summary:

Amit won his 3rd Indian Puzzle Championship. Rohan Rao finished in a solid second place, celebrating his return to solving after a 2-year absence. Jaipal Reddy M rounded out the podium at 3rd place.

There were two solvers in the Above-50 category, Jaipal was one of them and secured 1st place with Anil Khosla finishing 2nd.

We hope to see more female competitors in the future. At this event, there were three, Gunasundhari D, Priyam Bhushan and Anithra P J. Though she has participated in ISC before, it was Guna's debut year in IPC and she had an impressive showing, finishing in 1st place among females. It was very close between her and Priyam with both finishing on 480 points, and the tie-breaker rule had to be used to separate them. Anithra rounded it up by finishing 3rd, with a respectable total of 380

LMI extends sincere gratitude to authors Chandrachud Nanduri, Chiel Beenhakker, David Altizio, Madhav Sankaranarayanan, Martin Ender, Murat Can Tonta, Prasanna Seshadri, Priyam Bhushan (Fun Event), Tawan Sunathvanichkul and Walker Anderson, and to all the test solvers, volunteers, etc. who helped put this top-quality event together.

Now, some notes about the remainder of the event.

Puzzle Fun Event:

After the IPC main rounds, there was a fun event conducted by Priyam Bhushan, with 3-player teams participating in 3 rounds of competition. Round 1 was a quiz about the Indian and World Puzzle Community and history around it, Round 2 was about drawing in one particular cell of mini-puzzles flashed on screen, and Round 3 was about solving some mini puzzles where there was a restriction that only 4 could be solved at a time.

The team of Kishore Sridharan, Anubhav Balodhi and Priya Banthia finished first here, and all the participants had a lot of fun with the change of pace.

Puzzle Ramayan Playoffs:

Once the checking was done for the IPC main rounds, it was time for the Puzzle Ramayan 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. A year later, Puzzle Ramayan was introduced with the same aim. There are strict eligibility criteria to achieve this end, and the top 3 is decided in a playoff contest based on the rankings in IPC among the eligible participants.

The PR Playoffs have two stages, first choosing the 3rd place contender from among the 3rd, 4th and 5th best eligible solvers from the IPC rankings and then holding another playoff to determine the top 3 rankings.

At the 2025 edition, the 3rd-5th place playoff was contested by Tushar Maheshwari, Avinash Kumar and Subham Soni. The puzzles to be solved were a Divide & Conquer and a Country Road. All 3 participants had ups and downs through the two puzzles but eventually Soni held his nerve and emerged the winner and the new 3rd seed. The second playoff had a Knights puzzle and a Skyscrapers puzzle, with Subham joining Kartik Reddy and Tigran Wadia at 1st and 2nd respectively. All 3 were somewhat neck and neck on the Knights puzzle but Kartik then breezed through the Skyscrapers. Tigran eventually finished the Skyscrapers as well before time, and that was that.

Kartik Reddy is the 2025 Puzzle Ramayan winner, winning it for the first time after coming close multiple times in the past. Tigran Wadia held on to 2nd place while Subham Soni climbed from 5th to secure 3rd place.

Conclusion:

The Indian Puzzle Championship was held successfully and led to the selection of a potentially good team to represent India at the World Puzzle Championship. The event also provided a platform for solvers to shine in their respective categories and gave a chance for the Indian Puzzle community to get together and celebrate their shared interest. Here are the full results.