Last weekend I participated in the Indian Sudoku Championship and Sudoku Mahabharat playoffs organised by Logic Masters India at Kolkata. I'm happy to share that I finished 8th in the Indian Sudoku Championship and 2nd in the Sudoku Mahabharat😀
It was a wonderful day of meeting some long-time friends, getting to know a few new sudoku solvers, participating in the contest as well as fun event, celebrating the birthday of Kumaresan sir, participating in the Sudoku Mahabharat playoffs and a lot more!
Before I go into recounting the experience by each round, I would like to thank
Prasanna for curating the sudokus for the event, the sudoku authors [Bill Murphy (Australia), Chandrachud Nanduri (India), James Peter (India), Madhav Sankaranarayanan (India), Nikola Zivanovic (Serbia), Philip
Newman (USA), Prasanna (India), Wessel Strijkstra (The Netherlands)], the on ground team (
Subham,
Priya and
Neha),
Priyam for organising the fun event and the volunteers.
Below I share my experience of participating in the championship.
The first round had 8 Classic Sudokus, 1 Overlapping Sudoku and 1 Sudo-Kurve. I started with the 5th and 6th classic and could easily complete them. Then went on to Overlapping and Sudo-kurve as they were highest pointers. Though I took some time, I could complete those two and moved on to the high pointer classics - 35 and 50 points. To complete faster I guessed in both of them and fortunately both my guesses turned out to be correct. Then I finished three more classics and was left with just one sudoku unfinished when the round ended. I was really happy with how the round went for me only to realise that I had made silly mistakes in both the Overlapping and Sudo-kurve to lose 125 points!
Below is a snap of the error I made in Sudo-kurve. See those two circled 8s. I would have gotten 70 points if I had written a 7 instead of the upper 8😑
Nevertheless, then came the 2nd round. This round had 8 sudoku variants from different Sudoku Mahabharat rounds. I started with the Thermo Sudoku, was making slow but good progress but ended up breaking it. But I decided to give it another try and this time I was able to complete the sudoku. Then went on to the Disjoint Sudoku. Though slowly, I could finish this as well. Next I started Battenburg sudoku. This one involved making a lot of odd-even markings but was a good solve. I aimed to do the 70-pointer irregular after this but unfortunately broke it. I had only 2 mins left. I thought to give the low pointer The Greater Sudoku a try but couldn't complete it in time. This round was also okayish and I wasn't much happy. After this round I was at 10th position.
The 3rd round had 10 variants to be completed in 60 minutes. I started with the Palindrome. It had a long Palindrome with a good pair and an overall good solve path. Then I went on to the Pandigital Sums Sudoku. In his stream on LMI Discord channel Prasanna had mentioned that there was some trick to solve this variant but I couldn't figure it out and asked him before the contest. With the trick, it was approachable. Not sure if I could have completed it without knowing the trick. Next I solved the 90 pointer German Whispers (after breaking it once), 55-pointer Outside 234 Sudoku and 25-pointer Parity Lines Sudoku. With very little time left, I made an unsuccessful attempt at 45-pointer Disparity Sudoku. But overall, this round went well. After this round I came up to 8th position. [Looks like there is some connection between me and 3rd round of ISC - last year also this was the round which lifted me up😉]
Then came the 4th round which had 12 interconnected sudokus! And did I perform badly at this round! I made a decent start with the top 3 sudokus but then kept on breaking the 4 sudokus at the bottom right. I broke them 4 times and could complete only 2 sudokus out of the 12 getting a horrible score of 50/320. But fortunately I still maintained the 8th position!
And I also qualified for the SM playoffs! I started with the 2nd seed position. The 3rd-5th seed playoffs started with Tushar, Pooja and Akash. Tushar advanced to the 1st-3rd seed playoffs between Harsh, myself and Tushar. I took a lot of time in the Thermo sudoku, broke it in between, solved it again. But then I solved the mastermind sudoku quite quickly and finished 2nd in the Sudoku Mahabharat.
With this the Indian Sudoku Championship, 2025 came to an end! This was followed by a fun event organised by Priyam, cake cutting for Kumaresan sir and bidding good bye to everyone. Looking forward to the next year's ISPC (hopefully I participate in IPC as well next year :))
