Since most of the Indian Sudoku Champs for the World Junior Sudoku Championship are from Kolkata, and it wasn't possible for them to travel to Bangalore for the Sudoku Mahabharat finals, Sumit Bothra and Akash Doulani organized a meet in Kolkata yesterday to solve the rounds from those finals, which was a great idea. This also means we had two significant meets happening simultaneously in two separate cities.

Everything from this point on is from a mail sent to me by Akash:
We had a small meet in Kolkata with the Sudoku Champs to solve the puzzles from Sudoku Mahabharata finals. the basic aim of the meet was to see how well the champs had been preparing for the World Junior Sudoku Championship. Sumit Bothra also took the test along with the champs, to act as an 'expert' reference point. We had Shristi Kejriwal, Hemant Malani and Shambo Debnath - the 3 National finalists. There were also two others, Muskan Kaint and Neha Jhawar, making up a total of 6 participants, including Sumit.

We started with a bit of general discussions regarding their practice. At around 10:30 AM, we started with the first round. Sumit and I had thought that the champs would be able to do well in this round because of daily practice of classics from some really good sources. Sumit topped round 1 ( as expected ) with 210 points. he was stuck in the 1st Classic which he could not complete. Hemant was 2nd with 145 points, having solved 7 out of 10. Shambo and Muskan scored 110 each. Shristi had a very disappointing round, with 95 points, solving just 4 Classics out of the 10. Neha also solved 4 but I don't remember her score as she had come late, and I didn't get time to check her paper properly, since the priority was more towards everyone getting the experience of the competition than the actual scores.

In round 2, Sumit submitted 12 minutes before the allotted time. As i was going through his paper , I noticed he had left two cells in Killer incomplete. Later on I also noticed he had done the Toroidal wrong. as a result Sumit missed out on any bonus for the round and finished with 220 points. Hemant topped Round 2 with 225 points. Hemant also left two cells incomplete in one of the Sudokus, otherwise he would have got some more points. Shristi also finished with 220 points. After this round, we discussed the puzzles of round 2. Sumit showed a nice trick in Inequality which I myself had missed in the finals in Bangalore, and that could have saved me around 3-4 minutes.

In round 3, Sumit did all except the last Skyscraper. since we were all getting late at this point considering the schedule we'd set, I didn't get the time to check the papers. Instead, we used the remaining time discussing Round 3, where Sumit again gave some nice tips on Skyscrapers which I didn't know.

We called it a day at this point. Later at home I tried the Skyscraper of Round 3, which I could not complete in the finals although I had ample time left, and now it got solved quite easily. So thanks a lot Sumit for some really good tips, if they benefited me they would definitely have benefited our Sudoku Champs too.

Reflecting on the test that we took together , the champs have to really pull up their socks and practice really hard if they want to make their presence count at the WJSC, and we made a few plans to address this.