alumni

Stanford Engineering Puzzle

March 2008

The day job of Thomas Snyder is postdoctoral scholar in the research group of bioengineering Professor Steven Quake (whom you may remember from the microfluidics puzzles of just a few months ago), but this past fall, Snyder rose to national fame as the U.S. Sudoku champion. You can find out a lot about Snyder and his penchant for puzzles by visiting this fun article and set of videos produced by the Stanford Medical Center.

Snyder is more than just a player. He also makes puzzles including the very clever, very Cardinal one below.

Yes, the solution is at the link above, but you wouldn't peek, would you? No, not you. You're too good for that.

Directions for puzzle

In this puzzle, once you are done admiring the design produced by the given numbers, your job will be to fill in the open squares with the numerals 1 to 9, without repeating any of them within the same row, column, or bold-outlined box. For fun, we will post (below) the names of alumni who successfully e-mail the numerals in the four corners to staff member Marge Kastner. She'll post the first 10 correct responders and every 10th right answerer after that.

Here's a tip, at least for Windows users. You can print just the puzzle (and not the whole page) by right clicking on it and then selecting "print picture."

S.U. doku

All entries, listed here or not, will be entered in the "Alumni Permanent Record" and count toward honorary degrees in Puzzology next June. To check out the degree earners for June 2007, please see the Puzzology page. Every 10th solver will be listed until the last weekend of the month, when the final entries will be awarded the "Weekend of Fame" before the next puzzle page is posted. So keep your solutions coming in.

"Winning" entries

  • 1) Wah Kwok
  • 2) Nicolas Vong
  • 3) Philip James
  • 4) Michael Connors
  • 5) Mark Gundersen
  • 6) Rick Doherty
  • 7) Darin McGrew
  • 8) Nick Baxter
  • 9) Alan Gibbs
  • 10) Evan Deardorff
  • 20) Mark Perkins
  • 30) Carolyn Buractaon
  • 40) Mary Sosa
  • 50) Ted Batey
  • 60) Allan Abbott
  • 70) Jason Pisano
  • 80) Townsend Duong
  • 90) Doug Yerger
  • 100) John Pigott
  • 110) Derrick Blohm
  • 120) Chris Via
  • 130) John Paff
  • 140) Jason Wolfe
  • 150) Carl Farrell
  • 160) Robert Siston
  • 170) Jonathan Stevens
  • 180) Jack Lin

Do you want to try your hand at past puzzles? Go to our Archive page.