US Sudoku National Championship
Greetings from Philadelphia. I just competed in the first ever historic US Sudoku National Championship competetion. I came up here to test my strategy against real people (nothing against WebSudoku) and find out once and for all if it worked. What a Surprise! Not only does this Rational Sudoku Strategy work, but most of the winning contestants use some form of this system. In fact, there was not a single finalist that used the 'Possibility Matrix' system! The winner of the competetion, Thomas Schneider, in fact, uses a strategy almost identical to Rational Sudoku, but with modified notation. There were many 'Possibility Matrix' contestants at the competition, but none of them made it to the finals. Neither did I, but the three finalists in the Advanced group (out of 150 contestants in the advanced group) all used some form of Rational Sudoku and certainly did not use the 'Possibility Matrix'. When you consider that Thomas finished his finalist Sudoku in a mere 7 minutes and 7 seconds, you might realize that you would barely have time to create a 'Possibility Matrix', much less begin extracting solutions from it before the competetion was over. Congradulations to Thomas! He is one heck of a nice guy. At 27 he has been solving Sudoku since he was about 9...even before it made its debut in Japan. Obviously, there was some stiff competetion, including other World Championship Sudoku contestants. Overall it was a great experience and very gratifying to see that all the work I have done has been in the right direction.Well, I have to go catch a plane back to Atlanta, but I will have more on the US Sudoku National Championship later...including the Finalist puzzle and a Rational Sudoku solution for it!
Sudoku Sam
Ratadu Sudoku!
PS. For more direct reorting on the Sudoku National Championship visit the Philadelphia Inquirer at www.philly.com. They were the ones who sponsored the competetion and they will have lots to report on it.
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