Welcome to Nerdsville, Croatia and the 2012 World Puzzle Championship. With a grandstand view of the island of Krk, it is a place with no vowels, but for one week only the world’s highest concentration of anoraks. Most of you have been to crossword gatherings so you know exactly what I mean. Compared with some of these guys, I’m actually cool.

As well as the crosswords you know about I also enjoy logic puzzles now and then, although I’m not in Simon’s league, and not a big vanilla Sudoku fan. I had a go this year at the annual online US Puzzle Championship, and a few weeks later an email arrives out of the blue from the UK Puzzle Association, of whom I had never heard, asking if I would be interested in joining the B team for the World Championship.

Sadly money is too short so I will reluctantly have to pass up the chance. Then inspiration strikes and I try a hundred-to-one shot by asking my boss if the company fancy the reflected glory of an employee representing the UK in exchange for sponsorship. In enlightened mood, to my surprise I confess, he agrees. The payback is an article for the in-house magazine – how hard can that be? It is an opportunity not to be missed and within three weeks I’m on the plane to Zagreb.

My airport pickup informs me via hand-signals that he’s just had two teeth out and won’t be very chatty. I’ve only learned six words in Croatian so my own conversation wouldn’t sparkle. On the return trip, by the way, another one has apparently gone.

The hotel is a monument to seventies communist-era concrete, now crumbling, but obviously state of the art and extremely fashionable when built. If M had known about this place, Bond would have found Blofeld much sooner and saved a lot of trouble. There’s even an oil refinery across the bay begging to be attacked by one-man mini-subs. The rooms are basic to say the least. Bare concrete on all sides, a single sheet and blanket with which to make your own bed, and a toilet flushed by turning on a tap.

As I arrive the World Sudoku Championship (WSC) is drawing to a close in an 8-person speed-solving knockout. Sudoku got its own tournament six years ago, whilst the main event is now in its 21st year.

I am surprised by the drama of this normally sedentary and solitary pastime. In one quarter final a solver, already one puzzle (and therefore “match point”) down, finishes first and turns away from his board, relief etched on his face. But the adjudicators declare his solution wrong. It must surely be all over. But it comes to light that the solution sheet is wrong, and he is awarded the point. He is so torn between relief and anger that the stress of it all causes his brain to turn to mush on the final puzzle and he is soundly beaten. In the end the Polish finalist takes his third world title.

We dine that night, between the Sudoku and Puzzle Competitions, in the local town of Trsat (where are those vowels?), and watch the ceremony in which the Polish victor picks up his trophy. On the bus back the most striking member of his team, a man approaching seven feet tall, with jet-black goatee beard and straight hair both down to his waist, weaves down the aisle offering slugs of Polish vodka. I’m not expecting to nudge the top of tomorrow’s league table, so I oblige him whilst others around me disappoint him by staying sober for the competition.

And so to the puzzle tournament proper. Since the call-up I’ve been frantically looking at previous competition material, and then depressing myself with my efforts at solving the puzzles. The puzzles themselves are carefully language- and culture-neutral, designed to test the best brains, with only the top performers having a chance of finishing any given round, so the likes of me at least have the luxury of choice. There are dozens of types of puzzle, and I’ve not had the chance to practise most of them, so I set myself the aim of at least attempting one of each before kick-off with a personal target of not coming last. A big bonus would be not to come last in the British team, but I daren’t hope for that much. I fear I will still be wasting solving time reading instructions whilst everyone else will be ploughing in, pencils blazing.

Speaking of pencils, I have brought pens, pencils, markers and highlighters, even a sharpener and eraser. Mentally patting myself on the back, I walk in to the arena (a conference room set up as if for school exams), where other people’s desks are entirely covered by pencils, all sharpened like rapiers. Surely this is over the top? Then I remember the likely incidence of OCD in the room. A big song and dance is made about everyone’s table being levelled and un-wobbled by sticky wedges. I am amused by this until five minutes into the first round when I get the point as elbows all around me fly into furies of error-correction.

We start with a gentle round of domino-hunting (a grid full of numbers which is a complete set of dominoes with no edges – all we have to do is pair them back into rectangles). Simple enough, I think, but of course some numbers are missing and have to be deduced, so the pressure racks up. I’m quite pleased that as the half-hour draws on I’ve managed three puzzles, out of nine, but then people start putting up hands and shouting that they’ve finished. What, really? It turns out that this is a “bonus” round, where in addition to full marks for solving, any competitors finishing within the half-hour get extra points.

The pattern is set for the later rounds. Some go well, some less so. I do particularly badly on rounds where practice and speed are key. One in particular has quite a few of the “paint cells black to make a shape” type, where the clues around the edge give variants on the number of black cells in that row/column. I’ve not done more than half a dozen of these since childhood, and I don’t know the techniques that I later find out the über-geeks have developed. But in puzzles that require intense logic, where practice does not play such a part, I fare better. I’m transported back to school and college days as I sit what amounts to a series of exams, with invigilators and strict rules. It’s much better in that I chose to be here, and the “tests” are things I’d do for fun anyway, but worse because I’m an also-ran, never getting close to finishing a paper.

Scripts are checked and marked surprisingly quickly, considering the effort involved (three checkers have to sign each one, apparently). But of course it’s never quick enough for those at the sharp end who want to know whether they’re in contention for the playoffs. Every time a round is marked, the noticeboard is mobbed and everyone checks their returned papers for possible marking errors that could have denied them a vital few points. I wait patiently until the crowds have subsided, and read from the bottom up. After two days of competition I am relatively pleased to have finished 104th, about two-thirds down the field, after a high of 88th equal at one point. I’m frustrated that I might have been comfortably inside the top 100 if I had not made two careless tiny slips, but then all those around me probably did similar things. I am overjoyed, though, to be fifth of eight in the UK team, finishing above one of the A team, which is way beyond expectation.

For all but the top eight finishers who must prepare for the morning’s playoff the competition is now over and we retire to the bar. I gather that several of the UK team have appeared on Countdown and other TV quiz shows. As we relax on the terrace outside the bar an old friend of some of my teammates rolls up. He is Turkey’s equivalent of a Countdown Octo-Champ and multiple grand-final winner. For entertainment (we know how to have a good time, as you can tell) we read out some numbers, but every time, before the final syllable of the target number dies away, he has a solution. And he doesn’t bother with simple addition and subtraction; the route is always the most complex possible. It’s breathtaking to watch. Honest.

These puzzle champions just don’t have brains that are wired normally, as I’m assuming my readers already know. Mind sports are different from physical sports. The brains of talented sportsmen are no different from average (in some cases much worse than average, which can get them into hot water), so apart from the fame and money they’re “normal”. But there seems to be no room in the head of a person with stupendous mental agility for any of the cares and desires of everyday life. Someone asked me whether it’s fair to compete against such people, but we’re all somewhere on the scale of various mental syndromes, and as long as nobody is cheating or on drugs, the best puzzler wins.

And so to the final of the WPC. The format is knockout, like the Sudoku, with the higher finisher in the regular rounds getting to choose his preferred puzzle first. There are a myriad different types of puzzle, certain people being stronger in certain types, so this amounts to a “serve”, and the outcome will depend on the ability to “break”, or finish first on a less favoured puzzle type. After much further drama (Marker Pens Run Dry in Puzzle Championship Shock!), we have a worthy champion, a German winning his eighth world title, over Americans second and third. Despite having no-one else in the quarter finals, the German team is strong enough to take the team title as well. Needless to say, almost all of my after-round insights into techniques I should have been using came from the German team, who have a thriving online community and practise like the world-beaters they are. Luckily I speak German (so it’s useful to me at least that the champions aren’t Thai or Nigerian). I feel better about my own performance when I remember that I knew nothing of this world a month ago.

In the evening there’s a celebratory final dinner, medal presentations and sad farewells from those who have to be up at five for flights. Everyone promises to keep in touch, mostly via puzzle blogs and online competitions. I promise too but with fingers crossed behind back. I will wait until the dust settles to work out whether I have any spare minutes I could eke out of my week for such pursuits. Mash’s output is already suffering, so it’s a tough call. Next year is Beijing, so I’m unlikely to be able to go anyway. It was great fun, but on the whole I think I prefer to do a puzzle without someone to tell me to put my pen down half way through, and someone else to put me to shame by finishing three harder ones in the same time (Mark Goodliffe for example, in a much more impressive recent piece of solving).

Then there is a final speech of the evening. Will Shortz stands up. As you will know in the crossword community this is the nearest we have to a superstar. As well as being the long-time editor of the New York Times crossword and star of a feature film, he is also – which I didn’t know until this week – board member of the WPF and founder of the WPC. An all-round hero and nice person to boot, whose acquaintance I have managed to make during the week off the back of my contacts in the crossword community.

So the big news is: the 23rd WPC, and 9th WSC in 2014 has been awarded to … London. Get practising now.

Posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2012 at 9:20 am under News.
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