On the scene | Thinking inside the boxes

Wei-Hwa Huang has been haunted by his lack of nerves before. When the pressure is on, the 33-year-old Mountain View, Calif., native just hasn't been able to perform.

No, Huang isn't an athlete, trial lawyer or surgeon. And unless there's something he's not telling us, he's never defused a bomb. The nature of the beast that has haunted Huang is entirely different.

You see, Huang plays Sudoku. And he's pretty damn good at it.

In fact, the software engineer and former Google employee is the best in the world, a feat he proved on Saturday at the Pennsylvania Convention Center when he won the Philadelphia Inquirer's Sudoku National Championship, the largest paid puzzle event in history.

In the three-person final, Huang finished an Advanced Puzzle in just seven minutes, 39 seconds in front of 725 eliminated participants and other spectators. But unlike the preliminary rounds, the playoff provided an opportunity for the audience to track Huang's every move, his thought process traced along an upright 3-by-3-foot white board.

This format has gotten to Huang in previous years. From 2005 to 2007, he finished second in the World Puzzle Championships, unable to conquer the public aspect of the competition.

But not this weekend. Huang may not be earning a paycheck right now, but his clutch performance scored him a bid and all-expenses-paid trip to the World Sudoku Championship in Slovakia and a $10,000 check.

"How well you do is how well your nerves can handle being up here," Huang said. "I have this sort of curse of the playoffs, which is that the last time I won the World Puzzle Championship [in 1999] was the last year that they did not have a playoff."

Since then, the American Sudoku scene has been thoroughly dominated by this weekend's runner-up, Thomas Snyder. The 28-year-old bioengineering researcher won the World Sudoku Championships in 2007 and 2008, and in the final, he finished just 26 seconds after Huang, his roommate and co-author. (Snyder said they just finished a puzzle book together.)

While Snyder is the next big thing on the Sudoku circuit, Huang has actually been on the puzzle scene longer than his younger colleague.

"I knew of Wei-Hwa way before he knew me at all," said Snyder, who earned a spot in the final by finishing three advanced puzzles in just over 14 minutes. "Now we're close friends."

The amity between America's eminent grid-fillers was apparent after the contest, but for eight or so minutes, they were all business.

Watching from behind their Sudoku stands, you might have thought they were artists standing before their easels, putting the finishing touches on a painting. Their chicken-scratch handwriting and illegible notes - filled with cryptic notations and Sudoku-speak - suggested otherwise.

As the puzzle began to reveal itself and the scribbling grew more furious, it became clear that this wasn't just a game. Huang whizzed to the finish after discovering the "5-9 barrier" - the puzzle's most challenging portion that unlocked the rest of the grid.

The fascination and extensive strategy involved beg the question: Why does this game have such a devout following?

Will Shortz, The New York Times crossword editor and America's favorite puzzle geek, hosted the event and offered some insight.

"We're faced with problems every day in life, and most of them have no perfect solutions," Shortz said in an interview. "When you finish, when you find the perfect solution, it's very satisfying. It gives you a feeling of being in control that we don't experience much in life."

No matter what the rationale, it's obvious America is warming up to Sudoku. Even in Philadelphia, a quintessentially blue-collar sports town, the game's roots are starting to catch hold.

The Inquirer is backing an effort to make Philly the home of 2010's World Sudoku Championship, an event previously limited to more exotic locales. But if its supporters are any indication, a world championship might fall into Philly's lap.

"This game is growing; it obviously has an international presence," said Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who doesn't play Sudoku but watched his sister compete this weekend.

"To have the international championship in Philadelphia I think would be so exciting and would certainly spread the news that not only is the game great but that Philadelphia is a great city."

So if this whole World Series thing doesn't work out, Philadelphians can always fall back on Sudoku.

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