Rubik’s Cube
The first time I speak to George Scholey this October, he is on the train to the UK Rubik’s Cube championships in Coventry. The 20-year-old English student at Queen Mary University in London won the title in 2019, and, as subsequent competitions were postponed due to the pandemic, has been reigning champion for three years. “It’s really nice, but undeserved,” he laughs.
For anyone hoping to solve a Rubik’s Cube – it has 43 quintillion possible combinations – Scholey has some simple advice: get on YouTube. Scholey solved his first cube in 2015 with the help of online videos. He memorised the steps and practised them for hours: “I was 13, so I had a lot of time on my hands.”
It’s a mistake to try to solve the cube side by side, says Scholey. Instead, do it layer by layer, focusing on changing the edge and side pieces. To do that, you will need to learn “algorithms” – this is where YouTube comes in. These are sets of moves that will temporarily mix up a cube, then allow you to put it back having switched a few pieces. You will probably only need to know five algorithms, but a beginner will make about 200 moves using them for a solve (Scholey can do it in 60).
We catch up a week later. Scholey didn’t manage to reclaim his title, but still walked away with a first-place trophy for the Skewb division (a different puzzle in the style of the Rubik’s Cube). Later, he broke a world record by solving 6,931 Rubik’s Cubes in 24 hours – and another, for solving the most puzzles while riding a skateboard.
Go
Go is thought to be the world’s oldest board game, originating around 2000BC in China. The game sees two players – with 181 black and 180 white stones respectively – try to consolidate as much territory as possible on the board, and capture each other’s stones.
Black goes first. Stones are placed, one by one, on the intersections of the 19 x 19 squared board. The intersections adjacent to a stone are called “liberties”. A stone is “captured” by an opponent when they surround it with their stones, thus leaving the first stone with no more liberties.
While Go can have more complex variations, it’s fine to start playing when you know this basic format, says Gaoge Wang, a biochemistry PhD in London who is this year’s UK national champion. Beginners can try playing on a smaller part of the board – such as a 9 x 9 area. Wang advises players to spread out across the board, rather than bunch up next to their opponent.
The last thing before you start? To learn the difference between a fake and a real eye – eyes are those single empty points on the board surrounded by stones on all sides. The game ends when both players think there aren’t any more helpful moves to be made, or one player resigns. All in all, Wang says, learning these starter rules, shouldn’t take more than five minutes – then you’re away.
Scrabble
Samarth Manchali’s favourite Scrabble word is zyzzyva, a species of tropical South American weevil. He is a little wary of giving advice to adult readers, because, as he puts it, “I’m still very small.” The nine-year-old was the under-10 champion at this year’s World Youth Scrabble Championships. “When they announced the news, I was overjoyed and even cried a little,” he says from his home in Bengaluru, India, where he is joined by his mother – and Scrabble coach – Shubha.
Manchali began playing Scrabble at seven, after watching Shubha and his older brother play while stuck at home during Covid-19. How did he become good so quickly? Manchali’s tips: learn all permissible two- and three-letter words – personal favourites are ZEX, JAK. Put the high-scoring letters, such as J, K, Q, Z, on the triple-letter squares. Have “board vision”, which means taking your lead from the board, rather than your letters – focusing on what spots can give maximum points, and places where you can block your opponent from high-scoring words. Shubha describes a more advanced method called tracking, which involves mentally keeping score of which tiles are still yet to be played. “If I know that my opponent is left with a Q, I will look for the place where it can be put, and I’ll try to place a letter there.”
“When I’m leading with the highest score,” Manchali says, “I block my opponent’s high-scoring places. Or if I think I’m losing, I try to open up the board to score more. I don’t lose hope until the last tile is played.”
Chess
For Jennifer Shahade, two-time US women’s chess champion, the biggest challenge in the game is rationing her concentration so she doesn’t burn out. “If you’re trying to visualise or figure out something on a board, it can sometimes be really difficult and your head can actually start to hurt.”
The trick is to identify key moments, such as the times when there are lots of pieces that could be captured – “that’s because the stakes are high” – or when there are possible checks of the king. “A great skill of a chess player is realising when you have to dig deep, and think as hard as possible.” Meanwhile, don’t spend too much time thinking when your opponent is playing, because “if then you’re wrong about your opponent’s move, your brain is going to be burned out”. Avoid tunnel vision, and getting too attached to one potential outcome: people often assume chess players are very good at thinking many moves ahead, Shahade says, “but what we’re actually really good at is looking at a lot of options right in front of us”.
Other tips: don’t move the same piece twice in the opening, and get all of your pieces in play. Castling – in which the king moves two squares towards a rook, and the rook to the other side of the king – should be done “often and early”, as it’s the only move that shifts two pieces at once, and protects your king. If you are playing black, remember to protect your pawn on F7 (on a left diagonal to the king) as it is the weakest place on the board. It’s a mistake often made by beginners: Shahade points out that Beth Harmon of cult television show The Queen’s Gambit lost in four moves in her first game because she forgot to protect that vulnerable square.
Jenga
In January last year, 12-year-old Auldin Maxwell, from Canada, first broke a world record when he stacked 693 Jenga blocks all atop a single, vertical piece. Two months later, he broke his own record using 1,400 blocks. By April, he earned another world record by building a tower with 500 giant Jenga blocks.
For those building their own towers, Maxwell, now 14, advises placing pieces in the same way you would place bricks on a house – ensure there are two pieces below to stabilise any top piece you add. Always work your way from the middle of the structure to the outer sides.
What does he hope to achieve next? “I would love to get to 2,000 blocks. That’s my absolute goal.”
Jigsaw
Most people do a few jigsaws as a child, and then stop, says Sarah Mills, the seven-time UK jigsaw champion. Though Mills, an insurance worker in Norfolk, never quit – “I’ve done them for ever.” To my surprise, she does not start a jigsaw by assembling the edge and corner pieces. “I find it easier to find pieces of all the same colour, and build up from blocks of colour outwards.” What about black-and-white puzzles? “Just last week, someone gave me a Harry Potter Dementors puzzle. It was all black and grey. Horrible!”
Sudoku
“The great appeal of Sudoku is the rules are very simple, but the logic can be quite complex,” says Mark Goodliffe, who represented the UK at this year’s World Sudoku Championship and won the title for over-50s.
There are two ways to tackle a Sudoku grid, Goodliffe says. The first is to look at an empty cell and write down all the numbers that could go in it, and eliminate them one by one. But that is slow. Better to “consider where a certain digit is going, and find all the limited locations it can go in”. Then, think laterally across all three dimensions: “If you’ve used a row to place a digit, check what that’s doing in a column and the box.” There’s also using the process of elimination: “If you find two cells in a box that have to be either two or four, then you know that none of the other cells in that box will be two or four.”
Goodliffe, who co-runs a puzzles YouTube channel that became a hit during lockdown, is also a 12-time Times crossword champion. Is there an overlap between his two award-winning endeavours?
“Remarkably little,” he says. “A lot of crossword people dislike Sudoku because they think it’s mechanical and unmemorable. And a lot of Sudoku people dislike crosswords because they require extensive vocabulary and practice and not just logic.” He thinks he may just have an antipathy to seeing an empty white square: “If somebody’s set me a puzzle, I want to find out the answer.”
Plus … beat the Countdown clock
By Jonathan Liew (above), Guardian sports writer and Countdown “octochamp”
Of course, you could always memorise the dictionary for the word rounds. And some do. But you’re busy people, and besides, most of the words in it are essentially useless for Countdown purposes. Through practice, you’ll learn which combinations tend to come up more often – look out for common suffixes such as ING, -ED, -IEST and -ATE. And remember the biggest fallacy about Countdown: that you only get 30 seconds. In fact, your effective time starts from the moment the first letter comes out. Use it ruthlessly.
With the numbers, it depends how confident you feel. If you’re arithmetically strong, this is your best chance of pulling ahead, so be aggressive. Go for six small numbers and work backwards from the target using division and subtraction. But if you just want to get some points on the board, choosing two big numbers gives you the best odds. If you ever encounter the dreaded “four big”, remember your 25-divisors: (100+50)/25=6, (100+75)/25=7, and so on.
The other key is managing the occasion. The Countdown studio is a stimulating environment. They film multiple episodes in a day, so when you encounter it for the first time, everyone there is more familiar with it than you. The temptation is to try to block it all out, but nerves will inevitably creep in. Instead, own the stage. Prepare some easy-going banter with the hosts. Maybe even something that will raise a chuckle. That little boost of confidence will bring out your best game.
… beat the Guardian cryptic crossword
By Alan Connor, Guardian crossword columnist
I insist that cryptic clues are easier than the ones in quick crosswords. Here’s why. While they often read like descriptions of a deranged surrealist painting, each is really two clues for the price of one.
Either at the start or at the end, there’s a definition of the answer, like you’d find in a quick crossword. Sometimes it takes a while to pick out that definition, but that’s part of the fun. The rest is a recipe for the letters themselves, unrelated to the word’s meaning.
Here’s one. “Reversing, smart vehicles (5)”. The definition bit is “vehicles”. The rest is hoping that you’ll take the word “smart” and reverse it. Two clues for one answer: TRAMS. Now, depending on how the crossword setter is feeling, you might not be given the word “smart” on a plate: the clue could read “ … intelligent vehicles” or “ … fashionable vehicles” or some other way of making you think of “smart” … and then, happily, of TRAMS.
It’s not always a reversal, but there aren’t many devices for solvers to watch out for. The answer may be hidden in the words of the clue. “Concealed among orchids (3)” suggests HID. And there are always plenty of anagrams. “Jumble sale offering beers (4)” is two clues for ALES.
These things are best picked up (a) with a friend for company and (b) through less fiendish crosswords, such as the Guardian’s Quiptic and the Observer’s Everyman. In fact, that’s what those puzzles are there for.
Looking for more?
For those looking to find puzzles outside the standard fare, Freddie Hand, second-year Cambridge maths undergraduate and puzzles champion, recommends the logic puzzles Yajilin, Star Battle, Tapa, and Akari. Useful books, Hand suggests, include Alex Bellos’s Puzzle Ninja, Puzzler’s Beyond Sudoku magazine, as well as works by Nikoli, a Japan-based publisher – they carry books with English explanations.
