India-origin girl is world’s fastest puzzler

Chennai: Deepika Ravichandran, a first generation US citizen born to Indian parents from Chennai, a junior (Grade 11) at University High School of Science and Engineering at Hartford, Connecticut has marched into the Guinness World Record to become the fastest puzzler, logging in at 13 minutes and 7 seconds, which comes to an average of putting together 18 pieces per minute.

The 15-year-old genius broke the previous record of 13 minutes 14 seconds achieved by Zdenek Bradac of the Czech Republic.  

In an email interview to Deccan Chronicle on Thursday, Deepika said that since her childhood days, she wanted to be a topper. Solving jigsaw puzzles is one of her skills. She was excited and happy that she had achieved her goal in breaking the world record.

“I try to solve, on an average, at least one 500 piece puzzle a day; this helps in focussing skills,” she said. Her ability to solve puzzles emerged when she solved a 101 Dalmatians puzzle in just 30 minutes when she three years old.

Part of Deepika’s world record attempt was to raise funds for her UNICEF High School club to feed at least a full 3 square meals a day to 250 needy children.

Deepika wants to get into research and is aiming for Nobel prize in the future, says her mother Ms. Sangeetha Ravichandran, a computer scientist in Connecticut, USA. Deepika’s father Ravichandran works in the IT sector.