Looking through older posts, the preview post for the 2015 World Puzzle and Sudoku Championships has been left hanging without a review for a couple of months. Here’s a quick summary of the scores from Sofia.
The sudoku championship was won by Kota Morinshi of Japan, who was number one going into the play-off as well as coming out of it, with the Japanese team victorious ahead of China and the Czech Republic. Silver medallists China took the top three places in the under-18 rankings, as strong a sign for the future as there can be. The UK finished eighth, taking the top two places in the over-50 rankings; David McNeill defended his over-50 title from 2014 and Mark Goodliffe was not far behind.
In the puzzle championship, three-time defending world champion Ulrich Voigt took a commanding lead into the play-off final, but Japan’s Endo Ken overtook him in the play-offs to take the title for the first time. (There is some discrepancy in the conversion of Japanese names to Western counterparts, but this site tends to consider it polite to prefer the name ordering that he chooses himself; this year, at least, he could just be referred to as Champ.) The under-18 title was won by Yanzhe Qiu of China for a third successive year, finishing ninth overall. This site calls search engine dibs on the phrase “future World Champion Yanzhe Qiu”.
The UK team finished seventh, within a gnat’s Kropki of equalling their best ever performance of sixth, and David McNeill won the over-50 title for both puzzles and sudoku. Congratulations to all the participants; I’m pretty sure that the UK teams are largely happy with their performances this year. If there’s a disappointment from an outside perspective, it’s that there wasn’t nearly as much coverage of the event as I’d have liked; Endo Ken has written up his experiences in English, modestly and honourably noting that he only won the play-off rather than the body of the tournament, but there’s little otherwise to share, unless you know otherwise.
At the risk of being a little reductive, possibly the easiest and most accessible way to enjoy the championship as sport is to consider it a contest between nations. 24 nations sent “A” teams of four solvers, each of whom scored points over 11 rounds of competition. These four solvers’ totals are added, along with the team’s results from three rounds of team competition, to produce an overall total score which determines the national placements. (As well as the 24 “A” teams, there were also 11 national “B” teams, 3 national “C” teams and 8 “United Nations” transnational teams, for 46 teams in total. By comparison, the German B-team would have beaten all but two of the national “A” teams, and the Japan B-team would have beaten all but five.) Here are those national totals:
1st 2nd 3rd 4th Total Team Grand Total 1 Germany 5910 4380 4055 3940 18285 7940 26225 2 Japan 5475 4630 4620 3325 18050 6680 24730 3 USA 5055 4150 3605 3225 16035 7780 23815 4 Hungary 4610 4365 3525 2708 15208 6180 21388 5 Czech Republic 4025 3500 3435 3260 14220 6060 20280 6 Slovakia 3880 3700 3637 2585 13802 5140 18942 7 UK 3725 3280 2765 2745 12515 6340 18855 8 Poland 4105 3790 2815 2135 12845 4800 17645 9 Serbia 4460 2190 2190 1965 10805 6260 17065 10 India 3805 2830 2640 2210 11485 5500 16985 11 France 3205 2955 2505 2490 11155 5660 16815 12 Netherlands 4625 3080 2395 1230 11330 5100 16430 13 Turkey 3215 3155 2150 2020 10540 3600 14140 14 China 4505 2230 1895 1525 10155 3700 13855 15 Romania 3240 2005 1730 765 7740 3500 11240 16 Italy 2490 1900 1660 1630 7680 3100 10780 17 Estonia 3160 2075 1600 600 7435 2800 10235 18 Greece 2230 1825 1500 1140 6695 2200 8895 19 Russia 2125 2060 1340 865 6390 2500 8890 20 Switzerland 1995 1645 1305 990 5935 1700 7635 21 Croatia 2235 1555 1135 735 5660 1400 7060 22 Finland 2890 1440 1415 1025 6770 0 6770 23 Bulgaria 1015 865 725 375 2980 800 3780 24 Korea 625 570 335 230 1760 800 2560
Back in October, this site proposed some odds, just for fun, and wasn’t too far off. True, the prediction was for Germany to only be second favourite, narrowly behind Japan, and was for the Czech Republic to be joint seventh rather than fifth. It gets a bit too close to being personal to say “If only _______ hadn’t got such-and-such a puzzle wrong!” Other than that, this site’s top seven is not looking too bad!
The 2016 championships will take place in Senec in south-west Slovakia. Fly to Vienna in Austria then travel fifty miles East and you’ll get to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia; another ten miles or so further and Senec will serenade you. The first chance to qualify for the UK teams for 2016 will be face-to-face at the UK Open Puzzle and Sudoku championships at their usual home of the the Selsdon Park Hotel near Croydon on 27th-28th February, with the top two finishers in each contest winning their places on the team!