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Thomas Snyder took seven minutes and nine seconds to solve an advanced puzzle to win the first Philadelphia Inquirer National Sudoku Championship on Saturday. Snyder, 27, of Palo Alto, Calif., won the $10,000 prize and a spot on the six-person U.S. World Sudoku Team, which will compete in the third annual World Sudoku Championship next year in Goa, India.
Snyder is the current world champion, having won the second world competition, held in the spring in Prague.
The tournament, hosted by New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, attracted 857 contestants and 302 spectators, ranging in age from 6 to 87.
Officials said the total participation made it the largest live puzzle tournament ever held.
Sudoku, a Japanese number puzzle, consists of a grid of nine rows of nine boxes, which must be filled in so the numbers one through nine appear just once in each column, row and three-by-three square.
It looks like arithmetic but requires the application of logic.
[Associated Press]
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