World Sudoku Championship
From PuzzleWiki
The World Sudoku Championship is an International Competition sponsored in part by the World Puzzle Federation. It generally tests competitors on Sudoku puzzles and Sudoku Variants.
Past Championships
- 1st WSC: Lucca, Italy, 2005
- 2nd WSC: Prague, Czech Republic, 2006
- 3rd WSC: Goa, India, 2007
- 4th WSC: Zilina, Slovakia, 2008
- 5th WSC: Phildelphia, USA, 2009
Draft Guidelines
These guidelines were in part inspired by Thomas Snyder's [Open Letter to the World Puzzle Federation Regarding Sudoku Championships]. The first draft was written by Wei-Hwa Huang.
- 30% to 70% of the puzzles in the championship (ideally 40%) should be "classic" Sudoku.
- With regards to Sudoku Solving Strategies: Puzzles for which bifurcation solving techniques excel over heuristic solving techniques should be minimized, eliminated, or labeled. They should not be used during playoffs.
- Sudoku Variants that reward solving heuristics that are significantly different from classic Sudoku should be minimized, eliminated, or labeled.
- The standards of competition should be publicly available to all contestants. References to "secret variants" are entertaining but should be avoided at all costs.
- The bonus and tiebreaker rules should be structured so that it is never beneficial to deliberately not solve a puzzle.
- The bonus rules should be structured so that it should be extremely unlikely for bonus points to dominate puzzle-solving points, and very unlikely for bonus points to be completely irrelevant. Organizers should not assume that they can predict how fast or how slow competitors will be.
- Puzzles that are "closer" to a solution should get more partial credit, particularly in a playoff or other situation in which a "tie" must be broken.
