An obsession of sudokulists? A digit? Suggest a collective noun for a group of Sudoku players at the foot of this article

Can you beat the world champion? This puzzle was solved by Thomas Snyder in 2 minutes 26 seconds on his way to lifting the Classic Cup. Solution here

Goa is sweltering. It is 36C (96.8F) and the humidity is off the scale. British and Russian tourists are slowly going lobster-red by the pool at the Holiday Inn Resort.

But inside an air-conditioned hall, behind the arcades of apartments, 89 people have their heads bent over grids of numbers. They have no time for the crashing surf of the Indian Ocean nor for the cold Kingfisher beers served by the smiling waiters.

These people are here to solve Sudoku with an intensity and speed that would leave your average commuter scratching his head. The Holiday Inn was the exotic venue for the third World Sudoku Championships, where the greatest puzzlers, from 31 countries, gathered to fight it out over two days for individual and team honours.

While Sudoku mania has ebbed in Britain - the frenzy of the early days replaced by a steady enthusiasm - the wave is still rolling around the world. In India there are more than ten million Sudoku players and rising fast. In Bangladesh, 48,000 entered the competition to form a team to send to the championships. More significantly, the Chinese are falling in love with the puzzle. Last year only a handful of evening newspapers there carried Sudoku. Now there are 19 daily papers with a puzzle and more than 200 Sudoku magazines.

Sun Shu Ping, general manager of Beijing Sudoku and Culture Society Development Ltd, which is sponsoring the Chinese team, estimates that there are now two million players in China. How many will there be next year? She smiles: “Perhaps 20 million, perhaps more.”

But those numbers are not the ones that matter in the championships, only the digits one to nine, in every row and column and every 3x3 box. The complexity behind the simple rules of Sudoku has created the glo-bal addiction and given the organisers in Goa the chance to create some truly scary puzzles.

On the first day of competition the players were presented with a blizzard of Su Doku variants with names such as Quad Max and Alphabet Substitution Twins, requiring the puzzlers to do much more than simply rattle through the grids. There were some amazing feats of speed in the classic puzzle rounds. Jakub Ondrousek, a young Czech, completed eight fiendish puzzles in only 18 minutes. The other star of the first day was Michael Collins, 35, a fund manager from London. When, mid-round, the electricity cut out for about 30 seconds, he was the only puzzler to reach into his bag and pull out a torch to keep solving.

The outstanding player of the tournament was Thomas Snyder, of the United States. He won the championship for the second year running, beating a Japanese player and two Czechs in the play-offs. He also won the competition to find the best solver of classic Sudoku puzzles, beating David McNeill, of Britain, into second.

Dr Snyder, 28, who has a PhD in biochemistry and is studying bio-engineering at Stanford, is the closest the Sudoku world has to a superstar. He has the technique and the experience, but mostly a brain that processes the visual data in Sudoku faster than anyone else. But he is uncomfortable talking about himself, and says simply: “I take advantage of my talents.” The British team, sponsored by Puzzler Media and led by Mr McNeill, 44, a lecturer in electronic engineering at Queen’s University, Belfast, finished 9th. Mr McNeill reached the quarter-final play-offs for the second year running, and was narrowly edged out of the final four. George Danker, 17, a student at Hampton School in West London, was placed 29th, Mr Collins was 43rd and Simon Anthony, 34, an investment banker from London, came 75th.

The team competition was won by the Czech Republic. The Australian team came last - hardly surprising, given that only one of the four players had done a Sudoku puzzle before this week. Calling themselves the Numbats, the team of rugby mates from the University of Western Australia Club in Perth managed to get sponsorship to come to Goa and were the first team to wear blazers and flip-flops. They made up for their lack of success by winning all the drinking competitions (hardly surprising as they were the only team taking part). Mark Skiffington, 39, the team captain, said: “We are proud to have represented our country.”

Last night the competitors were preparing to depart, leaving local residents and holidaymakers as mystified as when they arrived. One young British tourist said: “It’s a bit weird them coming all this way just to do a puzzle but I suppose it’s harmless enough. And it meant that we had the pool to ourselves.”

Natty numbers

— The World Sudoku Championship is part of the World Puzzle Federation, which aims to foster friendship among puzzle enthusiasts

— 132 competitors from 30 countries gathered in Goa for four days of Sudoku, mixing the classic version of the game with several variants

— Scoring is weighted to encourage them to attempt the variations. A classic trophy is awarded to the player with the best score in the classic puzzles

— Each country can be represented officially by four players. A country can send more players, but they must compete as individuals

— Turkey had nine players and Slovakia and China eight. Belarus sent a one-man team

Sources: World Sudoku Championship; World Puzzle Federation

Copyright WSC3/Quixy. Created by Deb Mohanty

Suggest a collective noun for a group of Su Doku players

Now that SuDoku is truly a global phenomenon, we thought it was time that it was marked linguistically. What is the collective noun for a group of SuDoku solvers? An obsession of sudokulists? A digit? What's your suggestion? Post your collective noun in the Have Your Say form below.

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