A festival of words turned its attention to numbers today for the inaugural Times National Sudoku Championships in Cheltenham. The craze, which originated in Japan and was brought to this country by The Times in November last year, is fast becoming a national addiction. It only seems right that we now have a national champion.

The excitement at Cheltenham Ladies College was palpable as 260 challengers competed for the right to be named Sudoku champion of Britain. The overall winner of the adult category was Nina Pell, an 18-year-old Maths student in her first year at Sheffield University. She triumphed over a field of men and women of all ages with a winning time of 13 minutes 48 seconds for a super fiendish puzzle.

A qualifying round of a very fiendish puzzle whittled the competition down to six finalists. Every round was held in exam conditions, raising the tension and excitement. The puzzle used in the grand final was a super fiendish, and was so difficult that two of the six could not complete it.

In the qualifying round, the tension was so great that the first five competitors to complete the puzzle had not done so correctly and were therefore disqualified.

The junior events were won by Hannah Cooper, 11, from Bracknell in the under 12s, and Matthew Funnell, a 14-year-old from Rickmansworth won the 12- to 16-year-old category. However, the standard was so high that the organisers vowed to use harder puzzles for the juniors next year. The under 12s completed difficult puzzles in under ten minutes, while the 12- to 16-year-olds clocked similar times for fiendish puzzles.

The man credited with the popularity of Sudoku is Wayne Gould. Gould is a retired High Court Judge, and now compiles Sudoku for times2.

“I’ve had a great day, it was a lot of fun,” he said. “In terms of making Sudoku a competitive event, it has gone much better than I expected. Everyone seemed to have a great time at Cheltenham and as they left the hall there was a real buzz, even though most of them had lost.

“If you’d have asked me two months ago whether Sudoku can work as a competition, I’d have said only as a one-off, but I’m beginning to think it could be an annual event. We now have a Times British Champion and we could challenge Le Figaro in France to a match, and introduce international competition.”

Our champion, Nina Pell, can’t wait for the chance to defend her crown: “It worked really well as a competition and was really successful. I was so nervous going into the final but quite confident as I’d finished second in my heat. I was still really shocked when it was announced I had won and there was a really painful wait for the results.

“I’ve been practising all week, and been into Su Doku since it started in The Times. I do the puzzle pretty much every day. I didn’t tell my university tutors that I was coming to do this, but I think they’ll be impressed even if they say I’ve been wasting all my time doing puzzles instead of my homework.”

The puzzles were first seen in the 1980s in Japan, and are solved by a process of logic rather than mathematical skill. Gould, a New Zealander, developed a computer program to produce the puzzles featured every day in The Times and on this website. Despite several imitations, Gould’s work for The Times remains the Sudoku benchmark.

It is impossible to travel on a train between 8 and 10 in the morning and not see someone poring over a puzzle. Sudoku is perhaps the only thing that can challenge The Da Vinci Code on the nation’s rush hour trains.

“I had no idea it would take off in the way it has,” Gould explains. “I thought it would be successful as an activity for individuals, but the way it has grown is incredible.”

FULL RESULTS

ADULT (super fiendish)
Nina Pell, 18, from Monmouth: 13.48
Naomi Cooper, 24, from London: 14.57
Hein van der wildenberg, 40, from London, 19.17

JUNIOR: 7-11 CATEGORY (difficult)
Hannah Cooper, 11, from Bracknell: 5.11
Alastair Gall, 11, from Aberdeen: 7.16
Oliver Garner, 11, from New Malden: 8.21

JUNIOR: 12-16 CATEGORY (fiendish)
Matthew Funnell, 14, from Rickmansworth: 5.35
Francesca Nichol, 15, from Glastonbury: 6.40
Christian Gowers, 15, from Cheshire: 9.02

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