Sudoku is one of the world’s most popular puzzle games, but many Sudoku players might be wondering, “who are the best Sudoku players in the world?” Out of all of the millions of people playing Sudoku on their morning commutes or at their desks or on their phones, how do the best of the best rise to the top? Where are they from? What do they do for a living? What did they study in school?

In the previous article in this series, we showed how to get started at solving Sudoku puzzles by searching the grid for “low-hanging fruit” and using simple process of elimination skills to identify which numbers need to go in which empty spaces.