Stanford student is tops at Sudoku

Sudoku, the numbers puzzle that claims 167 million U.S. players, held its first national championship in Philadelphia, drawing more than 800 people.

Organizers said the event attracted a larger crowd than expected, and indicated the popularity of the puzzle that has been a fixture in many U.S. newspapers since 2005 after being popularized by the Times of London the previous year.

The Philadelphia event was won by Sudoku’s reigning world champion, Thomas Snyder, 27, a postdoctoral student of bioengineering at Stanford University, who completed the “advanced” section in seven minutes, eight seconds.

A survey last summer by the Philadelphia Inquirer, which sponsored the event, found that 56% of the U.S. population had played the game.