Sudoku champ

At 13, Hyderabad boy Kartik Reddy, who was part of the India team along with Kolkata’s Shambo, stood second in the first edition of World Junior Sudoku Championship held at Beijing on July 24-25. “My father, Jaipal, has participated in the World Sudoku Championship before. In the past two years, even I developed an interested and began solving sudoku puzzles,” Kartik says.

Kartik came 9th individually from about 200 participants from 17 countries. “I practise sudoku for an hour every day. But for the championship, I used to practise for three hours. We also had a special two-day workshop in Kolkata where seniors taught us some tricks before we left,” Kartik says.

To celebrate his win, Kartik’s family took him for a Pro Kabaddi League match. Studying in Global Edge School, Kartik loves Maths, but isn’t a fan of Science. So when’s the next competition? “There are online tests every two weeks, for which we get an instruction booklet and a model puzzle from the World Puzzle Federation. Based on that score, we’ll have an offline contest to be selected for next year’s championship from India,” Kartik says.