Thomas Snyder of Palo Alto took just 7 minutes, 9 seconds to solve an advanced Sudoku puzzle and win the U.S. Sudoku Championship in Philadelphia last Saturday.

Snyder, 27, is also the current Sudoko world champion.

Almost 1,200 people competed in 12 age categories in the U.S. championship. Snyder won $10,000 for winning the contest, according to PR Newswire.

Snyder also won a place on the six-person U.S. team that will compete in the third annual championship in India next year.

The U.S. contest was sponsored by the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper.

Sudoku is a logic puzzle where numbers are entered into nine, 3x3 grids, each filled with numbers 1 to 9.

-- Don Kazak

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