Every year for the past six years Mark Goodliffe has entered the The Times national crossword championship. Every year he has won it.
Every year for the past six years Mr Goodliffe has also entered the sudoku championship. And every year he has failed. This year he tried again . . . and thought he’d failed again.
Looking up after completing the four fiendish puzzles set for the grand final he realised that Nina Rowe, 20, his fellow competitor, had her hand in the air to indicate that she had finished.
With resignation Mr Goodliffe reached for his Kindle, leaned back in his chair and picked up The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agencyas the rest of the field tried to polish off their grids.
But Ms Rowe, a student at Exeter, had made a mistake and Mr Goodliffe, a 49-year-old finance director, was finally champion in both crosswords and sudoku — the Bradley Wiggins of the puzzle world.
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“I’ve been in the final for six years and never got it. I didn’t think I’d done it today either because I saw Nina’s hand go up first,” he said. “She completed it in 20 minutes and I was 30 seconds behind her, but the speed sometimes makes you slip up. I feel bad for her, because I’ve lost in the same way before and it’s not great winning on the back of someone’s loss but it’s a relief. I feel like: finally, I’ve won.”
Ninety men and women from all over the country took part in The Times national sudoku championship on Saturday. It was a tense contest full of jittery mannerisms, tapping feet and pencil twiddling.
It was no better for those who came along to lend their support. Sat high above London in a room with a view, they waited all day drinking coffee and flicking through the papers — the atmosphere tense with library-like quiet. “That was more than fiendish,” they would say, shaking their heads at their friends, parents and other halves, when they finally spilled out of the room after another round.
Others would head straight for the answer sheets saying: “Let’s see how badly I’ve done then.”
To qualify for the competition, which was started in 2005, solvers time how long it takes them to complete a sudoku puzzle in The Times every day for five days and send them into the paper. The fastest solvers in the country are invited to the annual championship in London and pay £25 to compete.
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“If you’re really good it will take you three minutes but some people confess to taking two hours,” said David Levy, the organiser. “It’s a great game because it takes you 30 seconds to learn how to do it, but there’s depth.”
Although entrants could lie about their timings there is no point because it would only make the competition impossible. At the finals, competitors have to complete four classic “fiendish” sudokus in an hour under exam conditions. If just one of the 64 squares is blank, or filled with an incorrect number, they’ve failed. Up for grabs is £1,000 and a championship cup-style trophy.
The Times was responsible for introducing sudoku to the UK. “It was produced by the mathematician Leonhard Euler in the 18th century and was found by a New Zealand judge, Wayne Gould, years later,” Mr Levy said. “He made a computer system that could generate them and offered it to The Times and they said yes immediately.”
Seven of the eight contenders had previously been in the final and many of them could read their names on the cup standing at the front of the room.
This year Mr Goodliffe’s name will be added to the list on the silver trophy.
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He said he would celebrate by picking up the children and driving to the country. Champagne? “We’ll probably have to have orange squash,” he said.