Rohan Rao wins Times Su-Doku championship in Mumbai

It was a case of three’s company as buddies Rohan Rao, Prasanna Seshadri and Sanket Khanwalkar beat 1,700-odd participants at the Mumbai leg of the Times Su-Doku Championship in association with SRM University.
It took 23-year-old Rao all of 20 minutes to complete the puzzles in the 60-minute final round. A business analyst and former IITian, Rao ranked 16th last year at the World Su-Doku Championship.“However, my goal is to break my own previous international ranking from 2012,” he says, referring to his number 8 position from that time.
The first runner-up is another 23-year-old, puzzle constructor Prasanna Seshadri. He took 25 minutes to make a perfect score. Coming in as second runner-up with a 31-minute score was Sanket Khanwalkar, an application developer (incidentally music director Sneha Khanwalkar’s brother). Last year’s surprise fourth place winner, newspaper vendor Rajesh Manoharlal Baniya made sure he contested despite being in a personal crisis. He couldn’t make the cut this year but it was still a proud moment for him. His 10-year-old daughter also participated with him. “It makes me happy. She took to Su-Doku entirely on her own,” he says.
From school kids to housewives and senior citizens, the diversity of the 1,700 participants who thronged to the championship was wide and wonderful. S Sundaram, for instance, is an 80-year-old enthusiast of the game. “I saw the clipping of Bombay Times in the morning and rushed to register on the spot. How could I miss it!” he says.
“Su-Doku in India has reached a new level altogether, a logic-based game of numbers, the puzzle excites you to work on various strategies amidst tricky situations. It has helped lot of people overcome the fear of numbers and mathematics. It’s a great initiative by The Times of India and we feel immensely proud to be associated with the Times Sudoku Championship,” says Dr P Sathyanarayanan, President, SRM University.
The three Mumbai winners will lock horns with nine other finalists from the Bangalore, New Delhi and Chennai rounds for the finals to be held on Sunday in Mumbai. Watch this space to check out the final four who get to represent India at the World Su-Doku Championship in London, UK, later this year.