Stanford Postdoc Thomas Snyder Is New U.S. Sudoku Champion

October 26, 2007

The United States now has a sudoku king. He's Thomas Snyder, 27, a postdoctoral student in bioengineering at Stanford University, who holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University. LastMarch, Snyder won the world championship in Prague.

Snyder bested more than 850 other competitors in the Sudoku National Championship, hosted by the Philadelphia Inquirer in late October. When he raised his hand to say he was done, Snyder, from Palo Alto, Calif., could lay claim to $10,000. The Inquirer will send him, as part of the U.S. team, to defend his world title next year in Goa, India.

"It's by far the most I've ever won puzzling," Snyder told the Palo Alto Daily News.

Puzzle guru Will Shortz described the contest as the largest live puzzle tournament ever held in the United States. There were 150 players in the advanced category, 442 in the intermediate category, and 265 in the beginners' category. About one third of the contestants came from afar to Philadelphia to compete: from places such as British Columbia, California, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and cities in the Northeast. The youngest competitor was a six-year-old who played alongside her grandmother; the oldest was 87.

All the sudokus were hand-designed by puzzle expert Wei-Hwa Huang. "Hand-designed puzzles are more elegant" than computer-generated sudokus, said Nick Baxter, captain of the U.S. sudoku team. Baxter selected the contest puzzles from Huang's sudokus.

A $5,000 prize went to intermediate champion Ron Osher of Stamford, Conn. The beginner-level prize of $3,000 went to Lori DesRuisseaux of Elverson, Pa. "I just came down to have some fun," DesRuisseaux told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I never thought I'd make it to the finals."

Competitors confessed to an intense interest in the mathematical puzzle that, in three years, has become hugely popular in North America. "It's like cleaning my drawers and my cupboards: It's about putting things in order," said Gretel DeRuiter, a teacher from Mount Airy, Pa. "Of course, my drawers and cupboards are not in order, because I've been doing sudoku."

Snyder now spends a lot time designing sudoku puzzles by hand, often arranging the given numbers into the shapes of U.S. states, a baseball diamond, or other forms. "I enjoy seeing the art in puzzles," he said. Snyder has a book of sudokus tied to the classic board game Battleship coming out in the spring.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 21, 2007; Palo Alto Daily News, Oct. 23, 2007.