Hi. There will be a single registration for the event. The main event will be the ISC which is the qualification for WSC. SM playoffs will take place after the main rounds among the top five inexperienced finalists (Inexperienced refers to the criteria mentioned in the SM homepage).

SM Home page was correct, its been changed now.

Hi guys. One small suggestion regarding scheduling. The scheduling need to be taken care for SM finals (Aug 18) day such that we have some time for any informal discussions, suggestions at the end of the day considering we will have maximum participants for SM. We were not able to accommodate the same last year due to venue timing restrictions.

SM Finals: Confirmed participants so far:

1 Aashay Patil
2 Amit Sowani
3 Amod
4 Anil Khosla
5 Anithra P Janakiraman
6 Ashish Kumar
7 Damini Goyal
8 Gaurav Kumar Jain
9 Harmeet Singh
10 Jaipal Reddy Mogiligundla
11 Jayant Ameta
12 K. Ravichandran
13 Kishore Kumar
14 Mamta Singh
15 Pooja Bansal
16 Pranav Kamesh S
17 Prasanna Seshadri
18 Rishi Puri
19 Rohan Rao
20 Ruqaiyyah. M
21 Rushabh Vora
22 Sai Karthik Burra
23 Shaheer Rahman
24 Swati manglik
25 T. N. Venkatesh
26 Tejal Phatak
27 Varun R
28 Vishal
29 Lenson Andrade
30 Utkarsh Somaiya
31 Avinash K
32 R Kumaresan
33* Parameshwaran
34 Ashwin Paradkar
35* Vivek Jain
36 Rajesh Kumar
37 Kartik Reddy
38 Mamta Dhanuka
39 Karn Deep Ranjan
40 Parag Jain
41 Deepika Moningi

Also, some of you asked about practice material. The free practice material is all the online rounds which are archived on the LMI website. If you want 2017 or 2016 finals content it will cost up to Rs. 400 to purchase that since it is offline content. If anyone is interested, please drop an email with the year (2016 or 2017) you want to purchase.

If there is any scope for a wild card entry / last moment on spot registration , please do inform . I would be very keen on attending. ( did not participate in the SM 2018 rounds but did attend the SM finals in 2016 and 2017 )

Wild card entry: Anyone who has not participated in 4 SM rounds can participate in the finals but won't get rank.

Tentative date for the release of Instruction Booklet is 6th August 2018.

Instruction Booklet version 1 has been sent to the confirmed participants today.

In R2, substitution sudoku : Is the list of words used In contest same as that in example ?

Sorry, this question is specifically directed at the actual puzzle which appears in the Finals and is not intended for better understanding of the rules, so we will not be able to answer it.

For the Trampoline sudoku,the rules mention jumping vertically from the shaded cell.Does this mean 'Vertically up' alone,or both 'vertically up and down'?

Vertically up alone, as trampoline will always try to push you up. Will add this clarification in the final version of IB.

Nice set of puzzles. Loved the concept of the entire linked round and the trampoline sudoku especially :)

When I printed out the puzzles, the shaded squares came out pretty dark. Not sure if it was my printer or what, but I hope the actual booklet will have lighter shading :)

Can you please specify which all puzzles?

I am aware of Slot Machine. That will be lighter in the actual booklet and also lighter in the final version of the IB. But let us know if any other puzzles also it's printing dark.
Thanks.

In R3,Samurai 2 , is the vice versa rule applicable across neighbouring grids?For instance,R10C13, is it correct to deduce that 8 won't be in that cell because of the 9 above ?(similar question for other grids namely XV &Consecutive)

Even Sudoku and Clone Sudoku also came out dark for me.

ok, we will check and ensure that it won't be dark for the actual booklets.

Vice versa rule won't be applicable to neighboring grids (this will be added to the final version of IB). You can also get this by looking at R15C12 and R15C13.

Only the Quadruple clue extends to the neighbor grid, as shown in the example.

Instruction Booklet version 2 has been sent to the confirmed participants on 12 August.

IB Page 2 last paragraph:

"In the case of a single minor mistake in the whole round, 5 points for each full minute will be awarded."

is changed to

"In the case of a single minor mistake in the whole round, 8 points for each full minute will be awarded."

Results of Indian Sudoku Championship 2018 (Top 10)

1. Rohan Rao
2. Prasanna Seshadri
3. Pranav Kamesh
4. Kishore Kumar
5. Rishi Puri
6. Kartik Reddy
7. Amit Sowani
8. Shaheer Rahman
9. Jayant Ameta
10. Gaurav Kumar Jain

Congratulations to all the winners!
More details shall be posted later.

Results of Sudoku Mahabharat 2018 (Top 3)

1. Shaheer Rahman
2. Aashay Patil
3. Kartik Reddy

Congratulations to all the winners!
More details shall be posted later.

Congratulations to Amit Sowani and R Kumaresan for the Best Author award, for SM3 (Substitution and Odd Even)!

Classic Sudoku Master 2018 results

1. Kishore Kumar
2. Rohan Rao
3-4. Pranav Kamesh, Mamta Singh

Congratulations to the winners!

I am too lazy to maintain a blog but I wanted to share my thoughts on the ISC so I thought that this is the next best place I can do that.

I was participating at the ISPC after a gap of one year in 2017 with the WSPC happening in India. This time I had more practice than I ever had in the last five years especially with respect to sudoku. I reached early on Saturday morning and met a lot of puzzle friends after the WSPC last October and some new acquaintances as well. After a brief introduction session and a small Q&A session we got right into the puzzle solving.

The first round was 10 classics which I usually don’t do well on. I started from the 4th puzzle and started working my way upwards and ended up on the 9t puzzle for a total of 225 points from a potential 350. I got stuck on the 9th puzzle but I liked the puzzle as it repeatedly used hidden pairs.

I hoped to cover some lost ground in the second round. I started with Next to 9 and powered through it although it did not have an easy start. Next I went to the Little Killer and got a start very quickly but wasted a lot of time breaking the puzzle and ignoring a few of the outside clues. I soldiered through the irregular and the substitution puzzles. I got a good start in the slot machine sudoku but broke it in the end. Eventually I did not have enough time to complete the palindrome sudoku with a few digits left. I had underperformed on the most important round and ended up with 400 points from a potential 750. I loved the palindrome sudoku and the odd sum pair which I solved after the event.

The third round was post lunch and consisted of two samurai sudokus. I started with the variants samurai which I found to be easier than the classic samurai and finished it off quickly. The classic samurai had more linking between the grids and took me a bit longer. For the first time I was under pressure to complete the round fast and try to get more bonus. After a minute of checking for blank cells and obvious mistakes I submitted with 3 minutes bonus. After the round Kishore pointed out that a dot was missing between a 3 and a 6 in the Kropki sudoku. I had not noticed it as it came in the very end of my solve when I was only looking to satisfy the Classic rules. I think the organizers made the right decision to scrap this round from the final tally.

I liked the concept of the fourth round which had 9 sudoku which were linked as 3 triplets, one triplet having the same central row, one with same central column and one with same central box. I went in with a strategy of starting with Trampoline and Queen Sudoku as I felt those were the most constrained puzzles to create. In the first few minutes of the solve I realized an important strategy to focus on the central cell. As irrespective of whether the triplet is linked based on row, column or box the central cell will be the same within a triplet. With this strategy identifying the triplets became very easy and I quickly went through all other puzzles and after a quick scan submitted with 16 minutes bonus.

Overall I was satisfied with my performance and felt that I was able to be competitive for the first time after 2007 and with a little more practice I can aim to make it back to the Indian team.
An added bonus was winning the Best Authors prize along with Kumaresan for the Odd Even and Substitution round. I was not aware that we had won the prize and was mentioning to Prasanna that there should be a trophy for this category as well :P

Thanks to all the authors for putting together a wonderful set of puzzles which were at the appropriate level of difficulty for the Indian Sudoku championship. There were many memorable sudokus and moments which I will take away from the event. Also thanks to the organizers for stepping up and volunteering to sit out of the event and to take care of all logistic aspects required to make the event successful. Thanks for setting up the wonderful venue and awesome meal arrangements. You guys have set the blueprint for future organizers to try and emulate.