Former Amherst valedictorian named Sudoku world champ
by JESSICA L. FINCH Associate Editor

Thomas Snyder, world Sudoku champion, stands with Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, after capturing the title.

Do you Sudoku?

Thomas Snyder does, better than anyone else in the world.

The 1998 valedictorian for Amherst High School was named the World Sudoku Champion on April 1 in the Czech Republic, beating a field of more than 30 international teams.

"It was a relief to have won. I worked over the ghost from last year," he said, adding he had come close in the 2006 Sudoku Championships, placing second.

The two-day competition requires participants to go through qualifying rounds, completing as many puzzles from the packet as they can. In the final round, eight remaining players are seated on a stage, separated by dividers, while cameras are positioned behind them to project their work onto a screen for the audience.

"I could hear the audience starting to respond to me," Snyder said about the final round. Feeding off the crowd reaction, he had a feeling he was leading.

Snyder, 27, said the competition is about time management to get as many points as he could in the allowed time. Throughout the competition, he said he finished all but one puzzle, which was in round six.

In 2006, Snyder was leading throughout the competition but came up just short in the final round, placing him second in the world.

His mom, Marcia, an Amherst resident, said last year's finals were a big production, with the puzzles printed on huge boards, with cameras all around and an audience of hundreds watching.

"He should have won," she said. "He was leading the pack all the way through, but he found it difficult on stage, flustered with flash bulbs."

Snyder came back this year with experience and was one of the returning competitors able to place better than he had the prior year. The returning champion placed 18th.

"I had to get over some of the playoff jitters from last year," Snyder said.

In a way, his road to victory demonstrates how he has been a puzzle solver since he was 3 or 4 years old. When he was 12, the first World Puzzle Championship was held. The family purchased a book of the actual puzzles used in the competition that Snyder used to complete as a younger child.

After the initial interest, Snyder realized he was good at completing the various types of puzzles. As that became less of a challenge, he started to time himself. Eventually he started entering online competitions, recording the best times of all those submitted.

"When he was young, he had it in the back of his mind he was going to compete in the world championships someday. He never told us about that aspiration," Marcia said.

Not many years later that is exactly where he is.

In 2005 he unofficially participated on the U.S. B Team in the 14th World Puzzle Championship in Eger, Hungary, and finished 15th. In 2006 he was No. 1 on the official U.S. A Team and finished fourth in the world at the 15th World Puzzle Championship held in Borovets, Bulgaria.

This fall, Snyder will again compete on the U.S. A Team in the 16th World Puzzle Championship being held in Rio de Janeiro.

The Sudoku Championships were created as a spinoff from the World Puzzle Championships. For winning this year, Snyder was honored by Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, who, according to Snyder, also enjoys Sudoku puzzles.

"I get to tour the world and be close to people who are as into puzzles as you are ... the same crazy people," he said with a laugh.

Since graduating from Amherst High School, Snyder has received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from California Institute of Technology. He is currently working toward a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Harvard University.

Scheduled to graduate in May, Snyder will be the third Dr. Snyder from his family, and his thesis will be shelved at the university next to those of his father and brother.

"I hope to become a professor of chemistry and develop new technologies of studying biological systems and impacting the detection and treatment of human disease. One day, I hope to be remembered more for the impact I've had as a scientist and teacher than for winning a Sudoku championship," he stated in a letter to the Amherst Bee.

Since he was a teen at Amherst High School, Snyder has been traveling around the world studying and competing, which has been one of his favorite parts of the experience.

Snyder has a book of puzzles, "Battleship Sudoku," coming out later this year, published by Sterling Publishers.