In an ornately decorated conference room in Croydon, 180 heads are bowed.
“Everyone’s got a script?” the invigilator asks. “You may begin now.”
As booklets are turned over in unison and concentrated silence fills the room, interrupted only by the frantic scratching of pencils, one thing becomes clear: Sudoku is very a solemn business.
This is the ninth World Sudoku Championships, this year being held in the UK for the first time. Teams of four from 34 different countries, from Taiwan to South Korea, Greece to the US, have traveled thousands of kilometers to a suburban hotel in Surrey to compete for the glory of the title of world sudoku champion.
Held over two days, the competitors will take part in 11 45-minute rounds, grappling with more than 60 different varieties that — with names such as killer sudoku, thermo sudoku and even sandwich sudoku — are a far cry from your garden-variety newspaper puzzle.
Eight of the rounds are done individually, while in three others competitors work to solve the puzzles in their national teams. The top 10 individuals then enter the heated playoffs, where the winner was to be decided last night.
With no prize money, no controversies and no recorded incidences of cheating, this may be the most civilized competition in the world.
The gender ratio of this year’s competition is heavily skewed toward men, with women making up only about 30 percent of this year’s competitors and only one female world champion on record.
Competitors this year range from seven to 65 and upward.
The British team — made up of Mark Goodliffe, 48; Michael Collins, 41; David McNeill, 50 and eight-time winner of Countdown, Neil Zussman, 25 — looked dejected at a break. The previous round, it emerges, was “a total nightmare.”
“Between the first 20 minutes of the fourth round, Michael, David and me picked up zero points between us, which is appalling in the context of this game. It’s not just bad luck, it’s a big disaster and it’s gone all wrong,” Goodlife said.
They were not alone. Lu Pei, a 38-year-old elementary-school teacher competing for Taiwan for the first time this year, was also lamenting his own puzzle failures.
“I enjoyed it very much but now I’m a little sad because my scores were very low,” he said. “I looked around and I couldn’t believe people solve them so quickly — people around me solved them all when I had only done one or two.”
Shaking his head with a sigh, he added: “Maybe I need to practice my skills.”
Alan O’Donnell, chair of the UK Puzzle Association and organizer of this year’s championships, emphasized that the event was run purely by volunteers who simply loved puzzles.
“But we’ve got record numbers coming this year; China broke the records last year, but we’ve smashed that. This is the most-all encompassing sport in the world — we’ve got a mix of people of all ages, genders and nationalities competing at an international standard,” he said.
“People come here, not for cash prizes, but because they love the challenge of completing the puzzles and being part of the international puzzling community,” O’Donnell said.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS