A month ago, a casual glance at the UK Puzzle Association online forum alerted me to the fact that within a week there would be a Sudoku/Kenken competition taking place as part of the annual Mind Sports Olympiad in London. I had won the only crossword event held at the MSO, back in 2001.

The post said that the inaugural (Sudoku only) event last year had been a one-session ‘exam’ that you could leave as soon as you finished. I looked up the venue, and found it was within ten minutes of my office, on my bike. This would turn out to be a curse, and a blessing.

I paid my entry fee and duly turned up just before 10am on the day. About 16 solvers were in the room, 2 others from the UKPA and the rest who had paid an all-entry fee for the Mind Sports Olympiad. I was very disappointed when it was then announced that this year’s competition would be two 90-minute sessions: an 8-sudoku test at 10am followed by an 8-kenken test at about 11.45, and I scribbled a note on the test paper to the effect that I probably couldn’t make it back for the second session.

The test started, and I completed the Sudoku puzzles (a mix of standards, varying from Easy to Super-Fiendish in Times terms) in 25 minutes, handed them in, hopped on my bike, and raced back to the office. Sadly, this was an important morning at work, with the group’s interim results, the preparation of which I was responsible for, being publicly released, and crucial checking of these would definitely prevent me returning to the University of London an hour later.

Once our results had been put out officially at 1pm, I was free for a while, so I went back to find out what had happened in the MSO. I was hoping to pick up a copy of the Kenken puzzles and find out if I had made any mistakes on the Sudokus.

I was rather startled to find that the Kenken competition was still going on! David Levy, the organiser (who also runs the Times competitions) told me I had half an hour left, so I quickly sat down and did the Kenkens. A few people handed in while I was solving, and a few had clearly gone from the room already. I finished, and wondered about hanging around, but figured that marking would take some time, and that I had few prospects – the scoring system depended on finishing order across the two competitions as well as accuracy, so I felt I would need a lot of competitors to (implausibly) have made mistakes on the Kenkens to ‘podium’.

I headed back to work, still a bit bemused to have been able to complete the competition. After work, I headed back to ULU where some other competitors were able to fill me in on what had happened. The second guy to finish the Sudokus had taken about 45 minutes, and very few of the competitors had managed an all-correct script in that part. Some halfway through the Kenken session, a burning smell had started a fire alarm and the building had been evacuated for an hour, so the unfinished competitors (all but one of them) had been re-started shortly before I arrived.

It turned out my 11th place Kenken finish, and being one of only 4 entrants to finish inside the time with all puzzles correct, was enough together with the Sudoku result to earn me a bronze medal, behind David Collison and Roderick Grafton, both of the other UKPA competitors. And I was there in time for the medal ‘ceremony’, so I now have a very nice ‘Olympic’ medal, saying ‘London 2012’ on it! And no, I didn’t set the fire.

Mark Goodliffe

Posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2012 at 4:09 pm under News, Public.
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