One fine evening while we were speaking on a call, Amit & Prasanna mentioned that I should take the role of Director for the World Sudoku Championship 2026. While they had already thought about it, it came out of blue for me. I was definitely happily surprised but more than that nervous. My first response was that I need them to be there to guide me throughout which they obviously agreed to. With this one phone call, I was the Director of the World Sudoku Championship 2026!
It was a once in a lifetime experience to take up this role.
This year
as we aimed to have an overarching theme of Mahabharat, it started with planning
the theme for each and every round and putting the themes into a rough
structure. For some rounds it was a broad theme idea but for some we engineered
the rounds in a way that the layout and the structure of the sudokus were also adapted
to the theme. For example, for the first round Kuru Clan, we took the theme of
the Origin of the Pandavas and the Kauravas and chose the variants which
reflect the Origins of Sudoku. But for the round Draupadi’s Swayamvar, we
curated a Flower Sudoku and connected it with 5 Pentagram Sudokus. For Gandhari's Solidarity, we had the participants blindfold themselves in honour of Queen Gandhari. These ideas
took long discussions of exchanging ideas, building upon each other’s ideas and
thinking what can / cannot work in a contest setting.
In this
process of creating sudokus and working with other authors, I learnt something
very new. While I had collaborated with authors to create sudokus for a contest
earlier where we had split the responsibility with each one creating some
sudokus, I had never worked on a single sudoku with other authors. This time I
got to do this as well. I remember one particular sudoku where Madhav created
the sudoku, I modified it a bit and Madhav modified it a bit more and
eventually we had a sudoku which was set for WSC.
The process
of discussing sudoku ideas, testing them, discussing how we can make each
sudoku better and more interesting was a learning experience on its own. Every
author had some brilliant ideas and when we exchanged these ideas, we sometimes
reached something even better.
After the
first level of testing, the next step was to create booklets and send them to
testing by many testers including both Indians and International testers. When
it is about creating booklets, LMI has always relied upon the expert – Deb –
who created the booklets this time as well. For the Individual rounds, we
shared the booklets with all the testers. Generally the feedback from the
testers was good – they liked the sudokus as well as the theme. But there were
two concerns – the total solving time was coming out to be longer than what we
ideally wanted it to be and some of the sudokus were too difficult for the
contest. Additionally, there were few new variants which we had introduced
where the rules were confusing. Considering all the feedback we decided to drop
a total of 13 sudokus which brought everything into place. We also refined the
wordings for the rules for a few more sudokus.
Parallelly,
there was also a process of preparation and testing for the Instructions
Booklet (IB). There were many new variants for which we had created example
sudokus. Each of these sudokus was also tested by a team of testers. Based on
the feedback from these testers we made changes to ensure that they reflect the
rules for sudokus in the actual competition, the IB sudokus are also unique and
have a good solve path.
And there
was one additional parallel flow – testing the team rounds. The team rounds
were tested by Indian testers in many cities. Some of them got tested when we
met in August at the Indian Sudoku Championship; some others were tested in
Mumbai and few in Bangalore.
The testing
feedback for an event of the scale of WSC includes feedback such as the shade
of gray in one sudoku is not exactly same as the other one, the thickness of a
line is different, the IB sudoku does not have a closed loop but the
competition puzzle has and so on. Incorporating each and every feedback and
getting to a stage where all booklets are perfect is a task much bigger than
you can imagine!
Then came
the process of deciding the duration for each round, the points for each
sudoku, the bonus points for each round. We wanted to have a mix of rounds –
some finishable by many solvers and some finishable only by a few so that every
level of solver enjoys the rounds.
Fast
forward to the day of the World Championship! Standing on the stage in front of
153 participants from 32 countries was a moment which I can never describe in
words. It is a memory which will live alive in front of my eyes always and
forever! When each round started on time, ended on time, whenever a participant
shouted “Finished!”, when we were able to complete checking a round on time,
when I rushed to a participant to write down their bonus time, when I saw
participants enjoying the team rounds, when Tiit Vunk – 2x World Sudoku
Champion – told me that the quality of sudokus this year was one of the best in
the last 5 years, there was a wave of dance inside me (though I looked anxious
until the last round came to an end)! Being the Director of the World Sudoku
Championship was a feat I never dared to dream but proudly lived!
Ofcourse,
the role of being a part of core organizing team came with many other
responsibilities apart from the role as WSC Director. Getting to work for an
event of this scale was an experience in itself.
I was happy
to have locked in two major sponsorships this year with Matiks as the Title
Sponsor and Rodha as the sponsor of Team India. For many years since Covid, we
did not have any sponsor for sudoku & puzzles in India and WSPC was the best
chance to get sponsors on board. We were able to get few sponsors on board and
get a huge media coverage.
I also
worked on many other aspects in capacities big and small – from helping with
designing the standees (which came out as the life of the event hall), to
co-ordinating with transport vendor for airport transfers, to curating a plan
for excursion to looking at many many other small bits, it was an great time!
And lastly,
the great team I got to work with! A team which included experienced organisers
to first time volunteers, experienced sudoku authors to first time authors,
people from every major city of India but who had one common goal – to bring
the event to life! The journey was never a smooth ride. Thousands of issues
came up along the way but we stood together as a team – a team which was ready
to literally spend many sleepless nights to drive the event. And we did it!
Signing off
as the Director of World Sudoku Championship, 2026!
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