It's good to be able to organize the Indian Sudoku Championship. I thank Deb for the opportunity :) In general, last year's format, as planned by Deb, was well received and was, going by WSC rankings, pretty accurate in determining India's best solvers. So, for the most part, I'll be going by a similar pattern. So I suggest last year's Championship booklet as good (unofficial) practice material.

any location for the competition sir?

The competition will be online, on the page linked to in the opening post. Please check the FAQ if you're new to the site, the contest norms are given there. If you have any further doubts, feel free to ask.

On a related note: Like last year, this competition will be used to determine the Indian Sudoku Champion for the year 2014.

I think purpose of these championships is as below
IPC - Determine Indian Puzzle Champion as well as to select the Indian Puzzle Team for WPC2014
ISC- Determine Indian Sudoku Champion

Times Sudoku Championship later will be used to select the India Sudoku Team for WSC 2014.

Please do correct me if my understanding is wrong.

Hi Rajesh

I guess there will be no Times Sudoku Championship this time since the first post specifies that the Indian Team will be selected from ISC.

At this point I would request everyone not to make any assumptions about ISC/ TSC.

ISC has always been the mechanism for selecting the Indian participants for the world championships and continues to do so. Even last year the toppers from the ISC were invited to represent India at the WSC.

The only difference between TSC and ISC is that the participants selected though the TSC will have their travel and participation fees being paid for.

Coming to the question of when is the TSC for 2014 going to be held, I will be upfront about it that the dates have not been finalized yet. We are having some scheduling issues this year as the world championships are taking place earlier than usual.

So the key question that needs to be addressed is whether the Indian team will be sponsored or not. I cannot answer the question at the moment, but I will sure hope that the lack of clarity about the sponsorship at this stage will not influence anyone's enthusiasm to participate in the ISC.

Thanks Amit for explaining it quite clearly.

Assuming there is no TSC, will there be one team or two teams for WSC?

Please understand that it is difficult on the part of the organizers to make and act upon such assumptions (which I suppose is why Amit specifically requested that there be no assumptions). The TSC statuses will be confirmed in due time. Since there is ample time from now till June 1st, maybe we'll even know before the Championships, but what I will say as ISC organizer is to just put all that aside and enjoy the ISC for what it is, the crowning of a new Indian Champion. As the current Champion, I can't think of any added motivation being necessary.

Well said Prasanna.. Looking fwd to a great contest..

@ Amit - Will the team selected through ISC be 'A' team?

@ Admin - I have not recd any mail about ISC.. Plz send across the same to all the registered users..

An email was sent on 25-May regarding IPC & ISC. Players who login frequently to the forum in last few days were excluded from the email.

Thanks deb.

Some the practice Sudoku for ISC 2014.
Search 9 Sudoku
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/2014/05/search-9-sudoku-daily-sudoku-...

Untouch Sudoku
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/2014/05/no-touch-sudoku-daily-sudoku-...

Descriptive Pairs Sudoku
http://www.funwithpuzzles.com/2014/02/descriptive-pairs-sudoku-dail...

I will be preparing some more for ISC 2014 and will post it on my blog soon.

Some more practice. The Instruction Booklet's Inside Skyscrapers example was taken from the Instruction booklet of Best of LMI Mocks. Obviously, this means there is another one in the Puzzle Booklet. Note - it is under the name "Hidden" Skyscrapers. Also, I wrote one of these as practice for the World Sudoku Championship last year, and it can be found on my blog here . Note - this has diagonal arrows too which won't be there in the competition puzzle, but it is still nice practice nonetheless. For this puzzle, digits can repeat for diagonal arrows and same numbers can block each other as far as visibility goes.

There are Search 9s and Descriptive Pairs (there may be overlap with the Instruction booklet as I used some of my old Sudokus as examples) on my blog.

The rest of it is mostly common types. The Expanded Sudoku is a slight tweak to the ISC 2013 variant, Overlapping Sudoku, so that should be helpful as far as this form of thinking goes.

Beginners' Sudoku Contests should help for all the common variants.

The only thing left is Fortress I think, there are two I quickly found on Bastien's blog, but you should find more with searching a little through the LMI Monthly Tests.

@ Prasanna - Points distribution?

Should be released tomorrow.

i want to participate isc 20014

Dear Madhavi, you can if you are alive. In puzzles and sudoku typo errors will cost you. Be careful and Good luck.

Since you have already registered, all you have to do is login on the link given below when it comes active on Sunday, and participate. I'd advise you to download the Instruction booklet in the same link, read it carefully, and ask any doubts you may have in the ISC Discussion thread (2nd link given below).

http://logicmastersindia.com/2014/ISC/

http://logicmastersindia.com/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?start=1&t... (please post any further conversations about ISC 2014 in this link)

Last year the bonus points allowed upto a max of 4 wrong cells ( I guess allowing for typos) but in this year's IB I do not see anything. So is my assumption correct that if there is even 1 wrong cell, a player does not get the bonus points?

Secondly a minor technicality in the IB. In the Bonus section it is mentioned "Players submitting all Sudokus will get seven points per minute saved as bonus". I thnk it would be better if we added "Players submitting all correct answers" or something to this effect. Technically I can submit all wrong answers too. Nothing major but just an observation.

Rishi