As with last year’s entry, I’m doing this awards style and keeping the categories from last year. Commenters are welcome to recommend other “awards” for the best or worst in puzzles.
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About four weeks ago, a former sudoku champion rang a bell that cannot be unrung by claiming a fellow finalist was a cheater. While a lot of circumstantial evidence supported this case, no smoking gun was likely to be found from looking at video and photography from the event itself. Sudoku-related curiosities such as "unreasonable sticking ( Read more... )

(I'm sure an official announcement on philly.com will come soon, but an email signed by Will Shortz qualifies for me even with the many typos. Here, for the sudoku community - whether advanced, intermediate, or beginner - is finally some justice; nothing can fully restore the finals, but this is something.)

Dear Thomas ( Read more... )

TIME.com was following Wei-Hwa and me at the recent Sudoku National Championship and the video piece was just released. Aside from some minor factual flaws (I turned in my final puzzle at ~4:14, not ~7:30 for example), it captures the whole championship - even Eugene - really well. (Note: I'm not getting the embedded video to play right from lj ( Read more... )

Sudoku contest competitor to be retested - so, maybe someone found Eugene after all (or his not showing will make a choice easier?). This could get weird and I'm not sure what this extra step means in terms of how the investigation is leaning. Also of note, Phil Irwin from the chess community is the first to publicly associate the chess "player" ( Read more... )

No real further developments in the Sudobomber story over the last few days; the latest word is that the intermediate and beginner prizes will be released but no word on any changes in the advanced division.

I should be getting ready for the WPC, making instruction/preview posts here or something, but I have not had any time. I skimmed the ( Read more... )

Sudoku prizes frozen in cheating probe - the Inquirer is still incorrectly reporting that the second and not the third qualification round is critical here, but they are also mentioning that "After the competition, the blogosphere quickly began buzzing with skepticism and outrage. Chief among the bloggers was second-place finisher and former ( Read more... )

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: Possible Cheating Probed at Sudoku Tournament (they get a fundamental point wrong - its round 3 not round 2 that matters) - let's hope the evidence (such as the appearance of his test papers and whether it looks like a grid someone would have when solving a puzzle, versus a grid someone would have when copying/being ( Read more... )

I'll place "evidence" here as solvers or others send it to me of the likelihood something fishy was happening with Eugene Varshavsky at Saturday's tournament. These are screen captures from the Inquirer's own edited video. The first is the grid, as it was during the awards ceremony which was certainly after he stopped, and at increased contrast ( Read more... )

I never thought, given the level of distaste left in my mouth by serious organizational mistakes, bad puzzles, and other controversy at the World Sudoku Championship in Zilina, Slovakia, that I would ever again spend most of a trip back from a puzzle event in the midst of another serious controversy and with such serious disappointment at many ( Read more... )