After 11 years of trying, Mumbaikar wins India’s first silver at World Puzzle Championship

The WPC is a global contest where national teams compete to crack numeric and visual puzzles in the fastest time possible. In 2022’s event, Seshadri rose to the top by managing to solve “85-90%” of 165+ puzzles across two days—no mean feat, considering that every round is a surprise until you’re handed the papers.

Prasanna (in blue) at the World Puzzle Championship in Poland; and (right) a pensive competitor. (Source: WPF)

Speaking to The Indian Express, Prasanna says his silver win was a complete shock, but a ‘ridiculously awesome’ personal milestone after a decade of patiently climbing the leaderboard. His first rank in 2011 had been a modest 94th, while his best—until now—had been 16th, secured in 2019.

“Going into it this year, I had the mindset of being a top 12 hopeful to get into the playoffs (finals). My first round went badly, and I was 18th after it. Then I just kept climbing up and up, and couldn’t believe it,” beams Prasanna, who also has somewhat of a rare resume: he is one of India’s few, full-time puzzle constructors. “I’m absolutely delighted. I will later see how I can better this, but for now, I’m just so happy and proud.”

Prasanna had flown into Krakow, Poland as part of India’s national team, which did not qualify for the finals as a whole. The WPC is held in a different city each year by the World Puzzle Federation. Its 2017 edition was held in Bengaluru.

The Indian puzzle and sudoku teams in Krakow. From left: Prasanna Seshadri, Nityant Agarwal, Kishore Kumar S (back), Pranav Kamesh, Amit Sowani (back) and Jaipal Reddy. Beside him is Kartik Reddy, an indie solver.  (Source: WPF)

For those curious to see what kind of puzzles show up at contests, Prasanna has shared some of his favourite WPC grids below. A more exhaustive list can be found on the download pages of Indian competitions like the Puzzle Ramayan and Sudoku Mahabharat.

Wacky Sudoku, a ‘twisted’ variant: Place a number from 1 to N in each empty cell so that each row, column, and bold region contains every number from that range with no repeats, where N is the size of the region.

Yajilin Puzzle, where solvers had to find two unique solutions to the same cloned grid.

The ‘mindbending’ Aqre Puzzle, which had a tilted grid and was left unsolved by Prasanna due to time constraints.

The WPC gold this year went to Japan’s Ken Endo, another prolific solver who grabbed the top spot using an eight-minute time advantage over Prasanna.

However, India did manage a ‘minor’ gold at the championship—won by 17-year-old Nityant Agarwal, the team’s youngest player. Despite being a first-timer, the Jaipur resident walked away with the WPC’s Best Under-18 Player prize, and also won the U-18 World Sudoku gold this year.

Both Prasanna and Nityant are members of Logic Masters India, which scouts for our national puzzle and sudoku teams each year using the Indian Puzzle and Sudoku Championships. And yes, absolutely anyone can sign up on LMI’s website and Discord server to take part in these events. For the Discord, Indians can register by emailing logicmasteradmin@gmail.com.

The hunt for next year’s national team may begin as early as mid-December. Watch this space or @iepuzzles for updates!