Friday, March 30, 2007

Best in the world

or tenth at least after 6 rounds.

If you didn't know (and why would you?), the World Sudoku Championships are going on this weekend in Prague. The US sent a team of six, one of the members being Jason V. Zuffranieri. You may remember him from such events as the best man at my wedding or the reason I don't stay at the team hotel in Albuquerque. If you don't know him, think of me and the time and thought people think i put into league (apparently not this one though), multiply by that some large number, and that's Jason with logic puzzles and trivial pursuit-style games.

So after 6 rounds/~50 puzzles, very few (none?) of which are the regular sudoku that you see in the paper (but all in the theme), Jason ranks 10th out of 143 participants, and 2nd on the US team (the overall leader is on the US). There's a team competition going on which is limited to 4 of the 6 team members, so Jason should have a spot on that. Team captains select the four, and Jason is the "new guy", but that shouldn't matter, I don't think. The first two rounds of that were day, but results are not posted yet.

As for the overall standings, the US is in second at the moment, with Japan having a healthy lead for first (3 of the top 9 players). It's like they invented the game or something.

Go Jason!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Who knew there was a WORLD CHAMP TITLE FOR SUDOKU!!! And that you'd be friends with one of the best in the WORLD?! That's CRAZY! Goooooo Jason!!!

Will Jason be hosting a signing at finals if Joanne's Tuesday night team (Sudisku) makes it?! Just curious if I should pack my Sudoku puzzle book that night... =D

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the shout out. This has been a helluva trip, both physically and in the head-trip sense...

I think there's some beautiful symmetry in my rank in the final standings -- I can legitimately say I'm "Top Ten" and leave the details up to the listener. Furthermore, the playoffs are usually only the top eight...but one of the Japanese fellows has to leave, so they bumped everyone below him up one and gave a playoff slot to the 9th-place guy.

To think...I was only *one* puzzle from getting embarrassed on-camera! Oh what might have been...

I'd go on but I've got some more blather to go write. Talk to y'all upon my return.