Japanese competitors showed off their brainpower in bringing home titles in the recent World Puzzle Championship and World Sudoku Championship.

At the World Puzzle Championship (WPC), in which participants must test their wits against a wide range of puzzles, Ken Endo, 30, a three-time world champion, clinched the title in the individual category.

In the team category, Japan finished second to the United States.

At the World Sudoku Championship (WSC), which focuses only on number-placement puzzles, Japan won first place in the team category.

In the individual category, Kota Morinishi, 34, a four-time world champion, came in third and Endo finished fourth.

The two championships are contested at the same time in the same city. This year, they were held in Toronto, Canada, from Oct. 15 to Oct. 22.

Annually, roughly 200 to 300 participants from about 30 countries compete for total points, solving puzzles as quickly and accurately as possible within a set time over several days.

Puzzles and Sudoku (number-placement puzzles) may be familiar to many Japanese as they are often seen in newspapers and magazines.

Japanese participants have been strong competitors since the first championship began in the United States more than 30 years ago.

Japan compiled a formidable record with five individual and seven team wins in the WSC, and five individual and three team wins in the WPC.

PERFECT ON ALL QUESTIONS IN 20 MINUTES

Endo and Morinishi, both of whom are company employees and reside in Tokyo, showed superhuman speed at untangling puzzles.

This year, competitors were required to solve nine Sudoku puzzles within a 30-minute time limit. Morinishi and Endo both solved all correctly in 20 to 29 minutes.

Endo attributed his speed to practice, saying, “I have solved a lot of Sudoku puzzles, so I became naturally faster at solving them.”

He usually solves puzzles other than Sudoku, but in preparation for the competition, he solved 500 Sudoku puzzles in a month before the championship.

“Although my practice was done hastily, I was reasonably well-prepared,” Endo said.

His process of solving Sudoku puzzles is “not very different” from that of ordinary Sudoku fans.

While examining the rows, columns and blocks, he carefully fills in numbers in sequence to avoid duplicates.

“Being experienced, my eyes naturally go to the most promising parts. I think this makes me more efficient,” Endo said.

‘CHARISMATICS’ SPLIT ON COMPETITIVE PUZZLES

The WPC was first held in 1992 in New York.

Due to the global popularity of Sudoku in the early 2000s, the WSC started in 2006 and has been held simultaneously with the WPC since 2011.

At the beginning of the WPC in 1992, opinions among Japanese puzzle “charismatics” were divided regarding puzzle competitions that test one’s speed and accuracy against those of other participants.

Maki Kaji (1951-2021), known as the “godfather of Sudoku,” and one of the founders of Nikoli, a quarterly puzzle magazine, chose not to participate.

Yoshinao Anpuku, 56, Kaji’s successor and president of Nikoli magazine, said, “Kaji probably believed that there was no need to compete with others, only to enjoy solving puzzles.”

On the other hand, puzzle creator Tetsuya Nishio, 69, known as the “father of number placement,” who has been popular since the 1980s through Puzzler magazine, eagerly committed to participating in the WPC.

Nishio was excited for the chance to meet so many puzzle creators and fans worldwide, a rare opportunity before the internet era.

He recalled, “I was especially interested in learning about puzzles in Eastern Europe, which were thriving, but not much information about them reached Japan.”

Since then, Nishio and his fellow puzzle fans took the lead, and Japan has continued to participate in the world championships.

In 2013, they founded the Japan Puzzle Federation (JPF), a voluntary organization. It has been organizing the Japanese qualifying rounds under the official recognition of the World Puzzle Federation (WPF), which hosts the WPC.

The JPF, headed by Nishio, also publishes the Puzlova magazine irregularly.

Both Nishio and Anpuku now feel that while puzzles are fun to solve alone, competing with others adds extra enjoyment.

They said that they want to share the various joys of puzzle solving and broaden the fan base through their magazines.