Google, G-mode, Conceptis and Nikoli co-sponsor 2004 World Puzzle Championship

Monday, December 6, 2004

For the fifth year in a row, Conceptis co-sponsored the World Puzzle Championship. The 13 th championship was held in October in Opatija, Croatia and was organized by the Croatian Puzzle Federation.

This year the championship was sponsored by Google alongside G-mode, Conceptis and Nikoli and was supported by the Croatian puzzle magazine Feniks.

G-mode is a relatively new company in Japan, which was established about 5 years old. They are the largest mobile phone content provider in their country, and a publicly traded company. Their website offers over 100 different games, activities, ring tones, screensavers and so on, and of course, all sorts of logic puzzles.

Nikoli Puzzles is a veteran Japanese puzzle house, which publishes about 25 puzzle books each year. Nikoli is also the company behind the Puzzle Japan website, and an important puzzle inventor and many of the popular puzzles we are familiar with today are their original inventions. A good example is Slither link.

The winning team of the WPC 2004 was from USA with the teams from Germany and Hungary close behind. The individual winner was Niels Roest from the Netherlands who was also the individual winner in 2002. Second was 2003 champion Ulrich Voigt from Germany and third was Roger Barkan from the USA, who also won a first prize as member of the victorious team of USA.

Since it was conceived over 13 years ago, the WPC event has become the highlight of the international puzzling community. As in the last 4 years, Conceptis’ access to this exclusive event offered an opportunity to mix with puzzle experts from all over the world, get feedback on new picture-forming puzzles as well as ideas for future products.