Numbers game: Stanford researcher reigns supreme in solving sudoku puzzles

STANFORD, Calif. — Thomas Snyder feels the need for speed.

Talking as fast as his fingers fly over the grid on the paper, the 27-year-old Stanford University bioengineering postdoctoral scholar gives a short history of puzzle trivia, from the sliding puzzles of the late 1800s, to the crossword’s burst onto the scene in 1910, the Rubik’s cube dominance in 1980—and the splash that sudoku puzzles have made today.

He’s done in about three minutes flat. His fastest solution for a sudoku puzzle: 52 seconds.

At the first ever U.S. National Sudoku championships in Philadelphia in October, with more than 850 competitors, Snyder took the crown—and a check for $10,000. His time for the winning puzzle: seven minutes, seven seconds. Even more impressive, he finished the first qualifying round eight minutes before anyone else.

“Whiz kid” quickly comes to mind.

“If you put my brain under an fMRI machine while doing a sudoku puzzle, you’d probably see this endorphin rush,” Snyder said at a clip of about five words per second. “It can be fairly exciting.”

For those unaware of the craze, sudoku is a number puzzle that began appearing in newspapers in Japan in 1984 but caught fire internationally after appearing in The Times in Britain in 2004. The goal is to fill a nine-by-nine square grid so each row, column and three-by-three internal square includes the numbers 1 to 9 with no repeats. The puzzler starts the game with about 20 boxes already filled in (the givens).

“They’re like my morning cup of coffee to wake up and get the neurons firing,” said Snyder, who has also found logic puzzles handy for helping him see the world. Puzzle competitions have taken him to Brazil, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria.

As a kid, Snyder developed a passion for the old-fashioned jigsaw puzzle. He discovered a niche for his amazing puzzle skills while in graduate school at Harvard, where he earned a PhD in chemistry. Snyder has played in three major puzzle matches this year, traveling with the U.S. puzzle team to Prague where he won the world sudoku championship last spring after two days of solving more than 50 puzzles.

“In Prague, I met the president of the Czech Republic,” Snyder said. “Meeting a head of state because you’re good at puzzles is kinda cool.”

His personal puzzle mania is relegated to hobby status. Snyder’s got another more pressing career, after all, as a research associate in the lab of Stephen Quake, PhD, Stanford professor of bioengineering. But he does hope to make some money off his Battleship Sudoku puzzle book coming out in April after he competes in this year’s World Sudoku Championship in India.

But mostly, this is just for fun. And he’s ready to hand out tips to any fellow sudoku enthusiasts.

“Look at where the numbers are,” he said. “Fill in the easiest rows first.” He’s not too worried about giving away any insider information. He’s confident of his need for speed. It’s just plain tough for anyone to catch up.

Numbers game: A puzzle for Stanford