Originally published in The Blade on Sunday, November 12, 2006
By RYAN E. SMITH
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Sudoku may be the latest craze in puzzles, but others have come and gone. Remember the Rubik's Cube from the '80s? Or the popularity of the Soma Cube in the early '70s?
The people competing in the World Puzzle Championship do.
"Puzzle crazes have come up out of nowhere," said Nick Baxter, captain of the U.S. team that took first place in the event last month in Bulgaria.
"People need pastimes," Mr. Baxter, of California, continued. "It's kind of a relaxing way to loosen up the brain and relax and not worry about the world."
The best puzzlers are those who can see a problem from different perspectives and think creatively, according to Stephen Christman, a University of Toledo professor of psychology who has been studying puzzles and the influence of different thinking styles.
If you're a strongly right-handed person, he's got bad news: you tend to think more rigidly.
The good news is that anyone can get better. It just takes practice, and maybe a willingness to take a break for a while if you get stuck.
"The mind is much like any muscle. It's got to be exercised and conditioned, and it also needs to take the occasional break," he said.
To help, here are a few puzzles that were part of the Google U.S. Puzzle Championship. That online contest, held in June, was used to select part of the national team and was open to anyone. Close to 1,000 people submitted answers to 23 puzzles, which they had 2 1/2 hours to complete.
No one finished them all.
Don't worry, though. That's the way the test was intended, Mr. Baxter said.
"All the puzzles are accessible by pretty much everyone who tries to take the test," he said. "It's just a matter of time."
A link to the solutions can be found at the bottom of this page. The full version of the test can be found at: wpc.puzzles.com/g6/summary.htm. Good luck!
Test your skills with this sampling from the U.S. championship
DISTANCE (Hard) By Erich Friedman
Place the numbers 1 through 13 in order into the circles so that the distance between successive pairs (measured between the centers of the circles) is always greater than the previous pair. The distance between 1 and 2 must be less than the distance between 2 and 3, which in turn must be less than the distance between 3 and 4, etc.
Find the names of the 18 Bulgarian provinces in the grid (ignoring spaces and punctuation). Names may read forward, backward, or diagonally. The central 25 letters in the grid have been removed and are for you to determine.
Find the 10 differences between the two pictures.
