Puzzling weekend ahead

During the second annual Sudoku National Championship, Philly will host about 800 want-to-be puzzle masters from Maryland and across the country. During three 30-minute rounds, competitors, ages 7 to 84, will try to solve three Sudoku puzzles. They’re after bragging rights, $22,000 in prizes and a spot on the U.S. National Sudoku Team.

Whether he wins or loses, Baltimore civil engineer Sean Byrne, 37, says Saturday’s event allows him to compete “in the U.S. Championship of something.”

He doesn’t expect to solve his way to the $10,000 grand prize. Instead, he’ll travel 100 miles to see how he compares to the world’s best.

“There’s the old cliché, people who do puzzles have too much time on their hands,” said Saturday’s host and New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz. “But the exact opposite is true. It’s the busiest people who tend to do puzzles.”

Shortz — the only person in the world to hold a college degree in Enigmatology, the study of puzzles — attributes Sudoku’s universal appeal to its simplicity. “You can state the rules in one sentence. It’s very easy to learn how to do, but takes a long time to master because it involves a great depth of logic.”

To play Sudoku, you place a number in 81 spaces of a grid so that every row, column and shaded box contains the numbers 1 though 9.

“One of things people may not be aware of when they’re solving is how they’re focusing on something unrelated to the rest of their lives,” Shortz said. “When the puzzles are complete, people feel a sense of satisfaction and achievement. They’re refreshed and ready to go back to everything else.”

Drawing 857 competitors, last year’s inaugural championship set the Guinness World Record for “most number of people solving Sudoku simultaneously.”

Recent research shows that more than 156 million Americans have played Sudoku, according to Saturday’s organizers.

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If you go

2008 Philadelphia Inquirer Sudoku National Championship