SPECIAL POST — The 12th World Sudoku Championship, which I’ve attended in Bangalore, India, has just ended. It was the largest WSC to date — 206 competitors from 32 countries. Most countries were represented by four-person teams, although individual solvers could take part as well.

The contestants tackled almost 150 tough sudoku and sudoku variations over two days, scoring points for correct solutions. Point values varied according to the difficulty of the puzzles.

When it was over, the top five teams were China, Japan, France, USA and Czech Republic. China and Japan towered over everyone else.

The top individual solvers were Kota Morinishi of Japan (4,890 points) and Tiit Vunk of Estonia (4,887), with only 3 points separating them.