Sudoku world champion

Almost every puzzle player who considers himself an average Sudoku time expert can participate in solving competitions. Major championships are regularly held offline and online. Of course, the level of offline competitions is much more serious since they are held under the auspices of the World Puzzle Federation.

Many of you will be interested in knowing details about the Sudoku competition, including who currently holds the record and become a Sudoku World Champion titleholder.

Sudoku competitions

Let's start with the fact that there is an organization called WSC, which is part of the World Puzzle Federation and annually holds tournaments for participants worldwide. As part of the World Sudoku Championship Puzzles, competitions between single players and teams are organized. To win the title of best player, you must solve many puzzles and spend as little time as possible on them.

The European and US Sudoku championship has been organized almost every year, beginning from 2006. However, due to the global pandemic, the tournaments in 2020 and 2021 were officially canceled.

National Sudoku teams are formed by local branches, which select the best players and send them to the international championship. Here, they have to solve more than 100 different puzzles. Teams solve them over a few rounds. Based on the results of several rounds, the participants move to the playoff stage, where the top 3 winners are determined.

The prize funds cannot be called impressive. They usually range from 10-40 thousand dollars. But money is not the main thing in these competitions, as the players themselves confirm.

Online puzzle-solving competitions are also actively held on the Internet. It usually happens as part of promoting mobile applications and computer games of Sudoku. Many players record videos on YouTube, play online, and try to beat Sudoku time records.

Sudoku world champions 

To date, 16 official championships have already been held. At the same time, we can single out several recognized champions who hold the title of the best player in the world several times.

• Kota Morinishi. He is a Japanese puzzle expert and is considered the most decorated Sudoku player. He already has 4 victories in championships, won from
• Thomas Snyder. He is the author of one of the most significant Sudoku world records for a long term. However, many years later, America's achievement was surpassed. Snyder managed to become world champion three times. It happened in
• Jan Mrozowski. Polish champion, who, like Snyder, managed to win three times at the world championship. It happened in

Since 2007, team competitions have been held. Today, the undisputed leader in the team tournaments is the Japanese team. Their players have already won the championship six times. In second place is the team of the Czech Republic and China, with three awards.

Fastest Sudoku record

In the world of puzzles, setting the fastest Sudoku record is one of the main achievements. Many sources report that the killer Sudoku world record belongs to Thomas Snyder. But actually, it is not. His time record was broken in 2018.

A young Wang Shiyao Sudoku player is currently considered the official holder of the current world record. A Chinese woman solved a 9x9 puzzle in less than 55 seconds. The official record is 55.44 seconds, set at the WSC in Prague.

Now, the ex-record holder, American T. Snyder, did it in 1 minute and 24 seconds. When he set the record in 2006, he exceeded the previous achievement by more than 8 seconds.

Killer Sudoku world record

We would like to tell you a little about this game. It is a variation of a popular puzzle game that combines elements and rules of Sudoku and Kakuro. Despite such a colorful name, simple killer sudoku is solved much easier than classic sudoku puzzles. It all depends on your skills.

Despite the fact that Killer appeared back in the 90s in Japan and became popular in the United States after 2005, there are no international competitions for this game. Some challenging puzzle enthusiasts from the Internet try to solve these riddles and set their own achievements. For example Philip Newman, author of the Cracking The Cryptic channel, managed to assemble the puzzle in about 1 hour and 44 minutes.