Till eight months ago, the word Sudoku meant very little to S. Pranav Kamesh, a class XI student of Maharishi Vidya Mandir. Now, he is able to solve a range of Sudoku-related puzzles, from skyscrapers to arrows, with ease. His expertise in the different forms of the puzzle led him to the World Junior Sudoku Championships, where he was placed fourth in the under-18 category.
In January, when Logic Masters India came to his school to conduct the Sudoku Champs 2015, Pranav would occasionally solve the Sudoku puzzles in The Hindu , but apart from that, he had no interest in it. By the time he was placed second at the national level, however, he was able to finish the tough Classic Sudoku puzzles in less than five minutes.
“Once I knew there was a championship for Sudoku, my interest grew, and I started solving more complex puzzles,” Pranav said. He spent the next six months training in the various forms of Sudoku in preparation for the World Junior Sudoku Championships 2015 from July 23 to 26 in Beijing.
During the championships, Pranav, accompanied by Shristi Kejriwal (Mahadevi Birla World Academy, Kolkata) and Aditi Seshadri (Delhi Public School, Bengaluru), comprised team India for the under-18 category. Their team won the silver medal. “The competition took into consideration the team performance and individual performances before awarding the medal,” Pranav explained.
The team of three, along with three other participants, was also part of a Guinness World Records event for the largest multi-Sudoku puzzle consisting of 200 standard Sudoku grids achieved by Beijing Sudoku Association (China), in which 200 participants from ten countries took part. They received certificates of participation from Guinness World Records in the Officially Amazing category.
According to Rakesh Rai from Logic Masters India, the interest in Sudoku is still picking up in the city. “Now that there is a junior championship, there are a number of people who are taking up the puzzle,” he said.
There are new variants to Sudoku that come up every month, so people who are interested in the world championships should try and keep abreast of at least some of the common ones, he added.
