2010 Sudoku championship in Phila.
As one world championship is celebrated, another is announced: The Inquirer, which sponsors the national Sudoku championship, has won the big numbers game, and Philadelphia will be the site of the 2010 World Sudoku Championship.
As one world championship is celebrated, another is announced: The Inquirer, which sponsors the national Sudoku championship, has won the big numbers game, and Philadelphia will be the site of the 2010 World Sudoku Championship.
"Good news: Our bid to host the 2010 World Sudoku Championship in Philadelphia has been accepted," wrote Will Shortz, the puzzle master who hosts the Inquirer National Sudoku championship, in an e-mail from Minsk, Belarus, where he is overseeing the U.S. team at the 17th World Puzzle Championship.
On Saturday, just before he left for Minsk, Shortz hosted the second national Sudoku championship at the Convention Center, with more than $20,000 in prize money.
Shortz, the New York Times puzzle editor and NPR puzzle master, wrote that China, the only other bidder for the 2010 event, withdrew at the last minute.
The Philadelphia bid was backed by Mayor Nutter; the World Sudoku Championship here will be the fifth for the numbers puzzle, whose enormous popularity spread in the United States, Europe and Japan after newspapers began running it daily.
The World Puzzle Federation runs both the World Puzzle Championship, from which Shortz was writing, and the World Sudoku Championship. The federation's board of directors decides where championships are held.
The idea to begin a national Sudoku championship, which assures the winner a seat on the U.S. team for the world championship, came from Inquirer publisher Brian P. Tierney, chief executive officer of Philadelphia Media Holdings, which owns The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com.
Last year, the first national championship set a Guinness Book of World Records mark for the most people playing the game at once: 857. In July, Tierney announced that The Inquirer would bid to host the 2010 world competition.
Tierney said yesterday that he did not want to comment on the outcome of The Inquirer's bid until he received official notice from the World Puzzle Federation.
Shortz noted yesterday in his e-mail that the U.S. team was victorious at the World Puzzle Championship, which concluded this week. Finishing second was Japan, which was among teams from 22 countries that competed in the two days of logic and number puzzle-solving, including Sudoku.
"All the puzzles are language- and culture-neutral, so everyone can compete equally," wrote Shortz, who founded the championship in New York in 1992. Like the World Sudoku Championship, it is held in a different country each year.
Among the 80 puzzlers competing in Minsk, Ulrich Voigt of Germany won the individual championship for the sixth time, Shortz reported.
Wei-Hwa Huang, who won the national Sudoku championship in Philadelphia, came in 13th. Tom Snyder, last year's national Sudoku winner, finished ninth in the World Puzzle Championship.
Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/howardshapiro.
