The reason why people read the newspapers is, well, the news of course. But there’s another reason why the product that you’re holding in your hands has survived the test of time, why — despite all the talk of falling print sales — mid-day’s readership grew by four per cent in the last quarter. It’s the page with puzzles. Lakhs of people spend a chunk of their day exercising their brains with it. And of the different puzzles on offer, the one that features in most dailies — apart from the crossword — is Sudoku. Variants of the numbers game have in fact appeared in newspapers from as early as the 19th century. That shows how wildly popular it is. And if you think that solving it is a piece of cake for you, sign up for a Sudoku Mahabharata (SM) that will take place at an Andheri venue over six Sundays, starting this weekend.

The championship was started in 2015 with the objective of identifying the best talent in the country, so that they can represent India at the World Sudoku Championship that takes place every year). There is an online version of the competition as well. But Prasanna Seshadri, who will be hosting SM, tells us that they started the offline version since people need a printer to participate online, and not everyone has one at home. “We were also a smaller community earlier; the same people would keep winning since their game kept improving after participating in the world championships. So, we introduced SM as a way of building a bridge for newcomers too,” says Seshadri, who has India’s best individual rank of seventh in the global tournament.