A competition by the numbers

Roger Barkan stood in front of the grid, marker poised in his right hand, as he contemplated the numbers he had been given to work with.

For a time, he mostly just looked at the whiteboard on its easel, trying to calculate a solution. He scribbled a digit here or there, often quickly erasing what he had written while a small audience in the Mayor's Reception Room at City Hall watched silently.

Barkan, 27, wasn't holding them rapt with city budget figures; he was doing a sudoku, a puzzling, popular exercise at which he is a master.

The Berkeley, N.J., native, now a graduate student in math at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is among more than a thousand sudoku enthusiasts expected in Philadelphia in October for the first-ever national sudoku championship, sponsored by The Inquirer.

Because of his puzzle prowess, Barkan - who has qualified for the U.S. sudoku team in online competition two years - was chosen to solve a demonstration sudoku at a news conference yesterday announcing the tournament.

Noted puzzle master Will Shortz, who attended the announcement and demonstration, will preside over the three-day event, to be held Oct. 19 to 21 at the Convention Center.

Sudoku originated in the United States in 1979, but became popular in Japan and England before catching fire in the United States in the last two years, according to Shortz.

The contest will be divided into three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced.

The winner of the advanced division will take home $10,000 and secure a place on the U.S. team in the next World Sudoku Championship, to be held in India.

The intermediate winner will receive $5,000, and the beginner champion will pocket $3,000.

Trophies and prizes also will be awarded in other categories, based on such things as age, area of residence, and years of sudoku experience. To register for the tournament online, visit philly.com.

Inquirer publisher Brian P. Tierney, CEO of Philadelphia Media Holdings, said that the newspaper has agreed to sponsor the competition for the next three years.

"The expectation is that more than a thousand people will come from across the United States to participate," Tierney said. "With Will, we really want it to be a family event, and one of the great things about these puzzles is that teenagers can do them, as well as older folks. . . . Our research showed that there was a great interest among all ages in these puzzles."

That research led to a decision to establish a national championship because none existed, Tierney added.

After Tierney, Shortz and City Commerce Director Stephanie Naidoff (who described her husband as sudoku-obsessed) had spoken, Barkan went to work on a sudoku that Shortz described as being "on the hard side of moderate."

It took Barkan, who estimated he has done more than 10,000 sudokus in his life, 11 minutes, 36 seconds to conquer yesterday's challenge.

"I got off to a little slow start at first," he admitted, as his competitive side surfaced. "I don't want to get off to that slow a start again."