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Sudoku fever in city
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Many school students seem to be enthused by Sudoku
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Photo R. RAGU
IN IT TOGETHER When it comes to Sudoku, many heads are better than one
It looked like an enormous, noisy classroom full of uniform-clad students. Only, it was a holiday and the kids were working on Sudoku puzzles instead of sums or essays.
They were all there for the third annual Sudoku competition for students of standard IX to XII conducted by the World of Titan, Pursawalkam.
Some 230 kids from 32 schools in the city braved the rain and the traffic to take part in the one-hour contest that seems to have become a tradition of sorts in the city.
As teachers from their schools looked on, students in groups of three and four huddled together, solving the four puzzles given to them.
The entire hall buzzed with a hundred earnest conversations as the teams (a maximum of two per school) worked hard to try to finish as quickly as possible.
Most of the participants weren’t exactly new to the competition - some of the schools have participated all three years, and several kids were back for the second or third time.
And in the end, experience came up trumps, with last year’s winning school, D.A.V. Gill Nagar bagging both the first and second place.
“We want to keep this rolling trophy in our school forever,” said an ecstatic Karthik Balaji, who was on the winning team along with Nithin Mahesh, G. Ganesh and L. Pavendan.
Three of last year’s winners ended up in the runners-up team this time around.
“We missed out on the top spot this year, but its okay since our own school team came first,” said Sudarsh posing for photographs along with team mates Badrinarayanan, Vikram and Aarthi.
The double-win was particularly special for these students since none of them will be back next year—all eight are standard XII students.
The fastest solving time this year was 31 minutes, more than double last year’s record of just 14 minutes. That’s because the organisers upped the level for the third edition of the contest, with two ‘hard’ puzzles instead of just one, said the contestants.
In fact, the contest had to go into overtime to get its second runner-up, the Chettinad Vidhyashram team consisting of Karthik Ramanathan, Keerthana and Pallavi Mohan.
All the winners took home Titan Fastrack watches and all participants received certificates of participation.
Prizes and certificates distributed, the crowd of chattering kids dispersed and the hall was silent again—but the noisy Sudoku classroom will be back in session next year for the fourth edition of the annual contest.
DIVYA KUMAR
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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