At the 11th Sudoku World Championships in Senec, near Bratislava, Slovakia, Estonian Tiit Vunk won the gold medal in the individual competition! After two days of solving, the top four qualified for the super final. Tiit started the final in second place behind Jakub Ondroušek (Czech Republic) and ahead of defending champion Kota Morinishi from Japan and Shiyu Chen from China. With the first sudoku, Ondroušek managed to increase the gap over Tiit, but the men finished solving the second sudoku almost equally and no one else became a threat to Tiit. Tiit was the only one who solved all the sudokus in the final within the time limit. Ondroušek eventually came second and Morinishi third. Tiit Vunk has won two silver and one bronze medals at previous World Championships - now finally the long-awaited gold has come! A day ago, Tiit also won the Sudoku GP, meaning he has done a golden double at this World Championship. A total of 8 Estonians are participating in the World Championship, which means that Estonia is represented by both the A and B teams. 214 solvers from thirty countries are participating in the Sudoku World Championship. PS! Half of the Estonian team started solving sudoku seriously from Vind. So Tiit has given Estonian mental sports more than "just" a great world champion title!
Tiit Vunk is the world champion in solving sudoku puzzles!
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Good luck!
[u]Final places of Estonian teams (official/unofficial):[/u] [u]EST-A (11th/15th - Estonia's best place ever):[/u] Tiit Vunk - 1st/1st Regina Vunk - 64th/114th Ragnar Kruberg - 70th/122nd Kertu Luht - 80th/140th [u]EST-B (-/41st):[/u] Jaan Laks - -/123rd Allar Padari - -/143rd Taavi Piller - -/146th Tauri Purk - -/165th All participants of the Estonian national team at the World Championships this year are vint.ee users.
I'm writing here some thoughts about the World Championships. I'll try to give an overview of what happened and how it went in a few posts. Since my luggage got lost on the way back with all the tasks I solved, I waited until then to give a normal overview of the competitions. This time, in addition to the regular competition, there was also a competition called Tour de Senec, where special prizes were awarded to the best newcomer, sprinter, climber and winner of the preliminary rounds. This changed the competition tactics of quite a few who wanted to strive for these special prizes. I didn't directly set any as a goal, but deep down I wanted to win one of them. The goal was simply to do as well as possible and generally prefer tasks that gave extra points in the climbers' classification. - Best climber: The hardest and most point-scoring sudokus were marked with small flags. Whoever solved the most of them was awarded the title of best climber. - Best Sprinter: Three rounds of classic Sudoku puzzles decided the title of best sprinter. These are rounds where the best solvers generally finish before the time limit and receive bonus points for time.
Round 1 - Debuts The round included quite a few little-known sudoku variants, a time limit of 40 minutes, a total of 14 sudokus. Each variant had one 9x9 and one 6x6 puzzle. I started with the 9x9 puzzles, as they gave more points and when the time was up, I could quickly do some small ones. The most expensive puzzle was marked with a mountaineer flag. I managed to finish the round about 25 seconds before the time limit, which left me tied for first place with the South Korean solver Seungjae Kwak. Jakub Ondroušek from the Czech Republic, who was essentially competing at home, was in a strong fourth position, without doing some 6x6 sudokus. The previous world champion Kota Morinishi from Japan was unable to finish the most expensive puzzle and was therefore quite far behind after the first round. However, it was only the first round and nothing was decided by it. If we exclude Seungjae and I, the top ten were only solvers from China, the Czech Republic and Japan.
Round 2 - Classics This was a round of classic sudoku. Time limit 30 minutes, 11 sudokus in total. This round was the first round in the sprinter category. I managed to finish the round a little more than 1 minute before the end of the time limit and after this round we were still tied for first place with Seungjae Kwak. Jakub Ondroušek had come in third after us, the gap with him increased even more, because he most likely had a mistake in one sudoku - or he really didn't finish it. Kota Morinishi had exactly the same fate. The round was surprisingly won by the Chinese Shiyu Chen 5 minutes before the end of the time limit. My result was 2-3. Since the Chinese woman's first round was quite poor, at the moment she was holding on to 4th place with a score of about 10% lower.
Round 3 - Assorted This is a selection of sudoku variants. Time limit 70 minutes, 16 sudokus in total. Two sudokus were marked with flags, including a digital sudoku, the solving of which probably caused many doubts, since it was a rather original and unpleasant task. Since I was still thinking about the mountain climber tasks, I went to solve the more difficult ones and was able to do it successfully. However, there were a couple of tasks in this round that were unpleasant to me, which also contained mathematics and which do not suit me very well. In fact, there were still those math tasks there, but I solved most of them. So 1 remained undone, but since I managed to make a mistake in two tasks, then in total 3 remained undone and the result of this round was 7th place - without a mistake it would have been 4th. However, both Kota and Jakub managed to solve all the tasks exactly by the last minute of the round. After their good performance, Jakub was the leader with 34 points, I was second and Kota was third with 29 points behind me. Seungjae Kwak dropped to fourth and the rest were already more than 100 points behind me. The top of the table was still teeming with solvers from Japan, the Czech Republic and China.
Round 4 - Tredoku This round was a 3D Sudoku consisting of 60 3x3 boxes connected to form a big monster. Time limit 25 minutes. This was an important round for sprinters. I managed to solve the task more than 7 minutes before the end of the time. Kota and Klara Vytiskova from the Czech Republic managed the same. Jakub was a minute slower. So I got a little closer to Jakub and further ahead of the rest.
Round 5 - Aliens This was a round where you had to find a so-called "foreign object" in each task that did not comply with the rules of the given sudoku. Time limit 35 minutes and a total of 8 tasks. The 2 most expensive tasks were marked with a flag. I did some easier ones and then went to solve the "liar killer sudoku" with the flag. After some testing, I came to the conclusion that I could not solve this task and decided to give up. The second flagged task remained unsolved and I finished 19th in the round. However, Jakub did all but one cheap task and got 133 points more than me in this round and flew ahead in the general table. Kota shared the same fate with me, who only got 9 points more than me. After the round, the top three were the same: Jakub, me, Kota, and the fourth and fifth places were still over 100 points behind despite the failed round. Some of the main competitors did just as badly or worse. The only big winner from this round was Jakub. That was the moment when I decided that I was basically not going to try to be a mountaineer. I will just focus on the tasks that I like and try to get the maximum possible points to get a good starting position in the possible final for the overall victory.
Round 6 - Basics The round consisted of 8 well-known variants. The time limit was 35 minutes. The catch was that all the sudokus were actually designed in such a way that they had to be solved using the principles of a completely different sudoku. For example, the diagonal sudoku had all the numbers on the diagonals and had to be solved as a classic one. The sums of the killer sudoku were all 45 and had to be solved as an extra region sudoku... etc. And in general, this round was structured in such a way that they could only be solved by knowing certain fundamental solving methods. It was important not to use the solving methods by which they were named. The last sudoku of the round was marked with a flag. It was confusing, but I managed to finish the round 2 minutes before the end of the time (4th-5th place). Jakub was 3 minutes faster, Kota either made a mistake or left one out. Points after the round (Jakub 2694, me 2507, Kota 2376). In fourth place, the Chinese Shiyu (2367 points) came very close to Kota, finishing the round as the winner, 1 minute faster than Jakub. The following were over 100 points behind.