JUST as The Times Su Doku Championship was won by a woman last year, so another one clinched the first world championship title in Lucca, Tuscany, at the weekend.

Jana Tylova, a 31-year-old economist from Most in the Czech Republic, was not expected to win, though most of the 100-strong audience — made up of equally dedicated puzzle fanatics — were rooting for her. They wanted the only female finalist to win, they said, but most of all they didn’t want the Americans to win, because that was too predictable.

That seemed most likely as Thomas Snyder, 26, a Harvard chemistry student with a very precise haircut, and Wei-Hwa Huang, 30, a software engineer with Google, had been leading for most of the previous 40 puzzles. But the quiet woman with the long ponytail secured eighth place in the cup and survived six near-impossible puzzles to make the final three.

And she survived Snyder’s dastardly strategy, which was to disable the other competitors “in a pub fight”, he suggested with his boyish grin. If the others couldn’t compete, he would automatically win, having led the previous day, he reasoned with the impeccable logic of a skilful puzzler. I think he was joking, though this is not something that Su Doku players do. But the previously assured American camp was getting twitchy.

Then, seconds before time was up for the final puzzle, Tylova completed it. No matter that a Frenchman in the audience had finished ahead of her and was doing high fives with his friends, or that Huang had also finished and was posing for photographers, thinking he had won. What he had not noticed — though the audience had — was that he had two of the same figure in a single row, but as it dawned on the Americans that he had messed up, you could feel their mood chill.

On the bus to the prize- giving ceremony Snyder and Huang debated the merits of choosing a winner to a puzzle that required guesswork. It was not a worthy test of logic, they concluded sadly.

But as Tylova received her prizes in the damask-lined Palazzo Ducale — she got roses, a Perspex plaque, a large bottle of Prosecco, a wooden Su Doku box and a week’s holiday in Lucca — Huang was gracious and Snyder spoke warmly of his “love” of puzzles.

Tylova continued to look terrified, especially when the president of the World Puzzle Federation tried to kiss her. But she managed to say: “There’s no difference between men and women and I tried to prove that, even in logic, women can stand on the same level.”

Unusually for a dedicated puzzler, she has a boyfriend, an IT manager who is also her trainer and coach. This makes him the perfect partner, because it enables her to practise for four hours a day.

As for the Americans, “well, next time”, their captain said with a shrug. “With a difficult puzzle, anything can happen.”

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