The World Sudoku Championship takes place at the same time as the World Puzzle Championship, and Jason will be competing in both — the eighth time he has been on the Sudoku team, and the fourth time on the Puzzle team.
Jason has been solving Sudoku puzzles since he was in junior high school, at a time before Sudoku gained its current level of popularity. “I’ve always been a quick thinker,” he said. “And I’ve always liked puzzles. Sudoku involves pure logic and pattern recognition skills. I always time myself and get a thrill from solving the puzzles quickly.”
Asked about the popularity of Sudoku, Jason said, “One thing that really attracts people to Sudoku is its universality. People from all over the world can try to solve the exact same puzzle, which isn’t the case for crosswords or other language-specific puzzles. Accumulated knowledge doesn’t really mean a lot here, while it certainly does in a game show or trivia competition. It’s a completely level playing field, and that clearly has some appeal.”
Jason has also taken a turn at creating new Sudoku puzzles and has shared one of his original puzzles (designed with a distinctly local reference) for all to enjoy. Click here for the puzzle (on page 1 and the solution on page 2).
