2026 UK GP Results

[detuned]

Another thread for the 2026 GP season!

Feels like there may be a couple of removals from the overall ranks, so will edit those in later. As usual I'll highlight the top 3 scores and call out further honourable mentions for those who make the top 100 - chosen to represent a really credible international standard to be proud of achieving!

A pretty good UK start to the season, with remarkably little to separate the top 3 UK scorers. All just about made the top 50 overall:

Top 3 UK 2026 Sudoku GP Round 1:
49 Tom Collyer 555
50 Calum Mailer 549
53 Freddie Hand 546

Jack Lawrence also made the top 100, and looks like Zoe Ashford will be just outside.

[pinkagape]

I'm planning on sharing some more side competitions like last year in due course (they're not quite ready yet), but I'll share some stats from Round 1 for you all.

There were 93 new players this round, the best of whom was Shanshui Wanyan in 70th place. There were four new UK players, the best of whom was Mig I in 477th place.

Benji Martin continued his recent good run with his best ever placing, #149, with his second score ever over 300.
Tom Collyer cemented his strong history with his 25th finish in the top 50.

Nobody in the UK beat their personal best score, suggesting that points were perhaps hard to come by this round. Seven international solvers did significantly beat their historic best score, including 雨 南宫 and Nora Borst with their first placing in the top 50, and Zihang Liu, with their first placing in the top 10.

[detuned]

Puzzle GP is up and running. On a personal note, 148 points of mistakes was pretty painful

Top 3 UK 2026 Puzzle GP Round 1:
2 Freddie Hand 897
42 Neil Zussman 580
66 Calum Mailer 515

Honourable top 100 mentions also to Aleksei Daniliuk, Adam Bissett and James McGowan - pretty good all round!

[pinkagape]

There were 37 new players this round, the best of whom was UK's Peter Roder, in #119.

Points were harder to come by than usual. Most of the top 10 were well under their highest points performance, with only Tiit Vunk getting close to his best points. It was Letian Ming's first foray into Puzzle GP, achieving 29th place, otherwise Lennart Muijres was the highest placed player to beat their highest score to date (32nd place).

UK-wise, aside from Peter, Zoe Ashford entered the top 150 for the first time, also beating her highest score to date. Aleksei Daniliuk topped 500 points for the first time, and Alex Wallace topped 200 points for the first time.

For international solvers, aside from Letian and Lennart, Lucy Epstein also had her first visit to the top 50, and there were three first-timers in the top 100: Efe Alan, Sed Holaysan and Ian Osborn.

[pinkagape]

I meant to ask - Maurice, did you write one puzzle in this Serbian set? Seemed like a weird outlier, so I wanted to ask what had happened there!

[Mblount]

No, that wasn't me - I'm guessing the process of editing the puzzle booklet works by replacing puzzles from the previous round, and my name got left in from 2025 R8.

[pinkagape]

In Sudoku GP Round 2, points seemed relatively easy to come by, as eight players surpassed 1000 points, six of them for the first time, including debutant Md Azim Hossain Sakib Sakib in 7th place, and 梓睿 王's 11th appearance marked their first time above 90th with their 1000 points. It was also Lucy Epstein's first time in the top 10, and Tingyan Qian and Wan Pei Jun's first times in the top 50.

It was Freddie's first score over 800 and he very nearly got 900 as he finished in the top 20 for the second time. It was Calum's first score over 700 and his 5th time in the top 50. Kota Morinishi also scored over 800 for the 50th time with his 90th top 20 position.

[detuned]

Without wanting to be sceptical by default, I'd be amazed if that Bangladeshi wasn't a cheater, which will improve everyone's ranks by 1. Result seems to have stood so far though...

Top 3 UK 2026 Sudoku GP Round 2:
15 Freddie Hand 899.3
39 Calum Mailer 730.3
127 Jack Lawrence 475

Bit of a mixed bag for the UK there - awesome stuff from Calum and Freddie though!

[pinkagape]

I’ll do my usual results post tonight hopefully, I just wanted to share. I solved the 102 point renban and then typed in the pencil mark rows again. This was my first ever round, sudoku or puzzle, in which I scored 600 points, and I lost it, not through mistyping, but through looking at the wrong puzzle when entering my rows. I am so frustrated! I’ve not made that mistake in all my years of Grand Prix.

[detuned]

I hope you take a moral victory out of it anyway Adam, 600 is a very good score. Funnily enough I did the same with the killer (entering in the skyscrapers rows twice), though 47 points on my total of 440 isn’t quite the same level of frustration

[pinkagape]

I never went over the Puzzle Round 2 results. Points were hard to come by. Only 3 people improved on their best score by much, and the two who'll be most pleased are Ian Osborn and Grace He, who both also made their first visits to the top 100. Kartal Nagy also racked up his 25th 500-point performance, and Aubin Danzo achieved his 25th place in the top 50.

[pinkagape]

In the Round 3 Sudoku, Tantan Dai and Jakub Ondrousek got their highest scores ever as points flowed relatively freely. While I very nearly broke the 600 point barrier for the first time, Anderson Wang, Philippe Meyer, Zimi Li, Kevin Sun and Huaiyuan Zhang both actually did, as Huaiyuan also broke into the top 50 for the first time. Jacob Bowdler from New Zealand broke 500 points and the top 100 for the first time as well.

Aleksei Daniliuk and Benji Martin both topped 400 points for the first time, and Amber Pease topped 200 points for the first time, and Emily Omre got 100 points for the first time. Zoe Ashford had her 20th time in the top 200 as well.

Lots of success all around!

[detuned]

Keeping a more UK focussed angle on results:

Top 3 UK 2026 Puzzle GP Round 2:
2 Freddie Hand 831
39 Neil Zussman 481
40 Aleksei Daniliuk 481

Lots of honourable mentions as well - James McGowan and Tom Collyer were just outside the top 50; also in the top 100 were Desirée Wilson, Emma McCaughan - and Adam Bissett was near enough in 101.


Top 3 UK 2026 Sudoku GP Round 3:
18 Freddie Hand 812.7 (will double check later, given partial bonus seems to be applied by default)
66 Calum Mailer 561
98 Adam Bissett 503

Jack Lawrence was just outside the top 100 as well. Can't remember too many times where a UK participant has beaten 800 points - Calum and Freddie continue to put in a very strong showing for the 2026 season.

[pinkagape]

Puzzle Ramayan Round 3 was another one where points were hard to come by. Nobody finished, and many of the top 10 were far off their usual points totals. Recent UK Open runner-up Valentin Miakinen took his first round victory with his first score over 1000 points.

UK-wise, Peter Roder will be celebrating his first time in the top 100 on his third showing. Aleksei Daniliuk reached his tenth score over 400 as Maurice reached his fifth.

[detuned]

From a rankings point of view, round 3 once again went pretty well from a UK perspective, with 7 in the top 100.

Top 3 UK 2026 Puzzle GP Round 3:
14 Freddie Hand 772
36 Neil Zussman 628
70 Peter Roder 487

Very close behind Peter, there are honourable top 100 mentions also to James McGowan, Aleksei Daniliuk, Calum Mailer and Maurice Blount

[detuned]

Another GP round I've managed to miss More good results from Calum and Freddie, though it seems there are quite a few bad submissions on this one as well

Top 3 UK 2026 Sudoku GP Round 4:
40 Calum Mailer 664
52 Freddie Hand 623
80 Jack Lawrence 552

No further honourable top 100 mentions this time round

[pinkagape]

Here's some honourable mentions for Round 4!

Suzhe Qiu won his first Sudoku GP with his third score of over 1000 as China took the top 4 places. Points were not easy to come by and no Brits posted best ever scores (though Robert le Duc came mighty close, just 2 points off his best ever), and it was Zoe Ashford's 20th score of 300 or more, and Benji Martin's 10th score of 200 or more. Meanwhile it was Howard Wilkinson's 80th time in the top 400, and Michael Walker's 20th time in the top 400.

[pinkagape]

So Puzzles Round 4 did not appeal to many, with very few competitors, and points were very hard to come by, but some great results for the UK, which I'm sure Tom will go into.

While points were scarce, ten players did set personal bests, including Peter Roder's superb 587 and 11th place. The only long-standing player to set a PB was Noriyuki Machimura, in 73rd, with his first score over 300.

Position wise, there was success for many! Besides Freddie's 24th podium place and Peter Roder's first time in the top 20, it was Todd and Maurice's first times in the top 50, Neil's 77th time in the top 50 (and 75th time scoring 400 or more) and Alex Robinson's second time in the top 200.

[detuned]

Haha - yeah I think that round favoured those who carefully went through the instructions and prepared themselves adequately for the cube geometry. As opposed to trying to wing it feeling half-baked at the last possible moment Wednesday evening! Some great results from a UK perspective

Top 3 UK 2026 Puzzle GP Round 4:
3 Freddie Hand 690
11 Peter Roder 587
40 Todd Davies 430

Loads of honourable mentions too - Neil, James and Maurice weren't too far behind Todd in the top 50 - have we ever had 6 UK solvers in the top 50 of any GP???. Adam was just outside the top 50, Desiree also in the top 100 with Aleksei just outside. Really well done everyone

[detuned]

I should add this round does highlight some real creaks in the consistency of the GP scoring system - though the ranks were good, the points are low and I imagine for quite a few people this doesn't survive the best 6 from 8 cut-off. If you don't have consistency in scores between rounds the whole thing starts losing credibility.

[pinkagape]

I've dug through the archives:

I've reinterpreted this question as: what is the highest position in which the 6th highest UK solver has finished in a GP round?

In 2017 when there were different divisions, the sixth placed UK solver in Division C for Round 1 was 39th!

5th: Heather Golding
11th: Charley Clover
13th: Adam Bissett
35th: Matthew White
37th: Matt Thomson
39th: Liane Robinson
48th: Ned Walker

Outside of the divisions system, 2024 R4 Puzzles was the most in the top 50. There were similar success stories for the top 6 solvers in 2021 Round 6 of Puzzles and 2022 Round 7 of Puzzles.

2021 Round 6:

1st: Freddie Hand
13th: Sam Cappleman-Lynes
24th: James McGowan
36th: Jeremy Kong
51st: Tom Collyer
56th: Neil Zussman

2022 Round 7:

3rd: Freddie Hand
7th: Neil Zussman
26th: James McGowan
53rd: Adam Bissett
54th: Matthew White
56th: Tom Collyer

However, there were 4 other occasions with 5 UK solvers in the top 50: 2015R8, 2021R1, 2021R4 and 2022R1

2022 Round 1 had 5 UK solvers in the top 40, which is probably the closest we can get:

6th: Freddie Hand
17th: Neil Zussman
29th: James McGowan
34th: Sam Cappleman-Lynes
39th: Adam Bissett
(85th: Jeremy Kong)

[pinkagape]

Sudoku GP Round 5 results are out, and there were no great surprises near the top of the leaderboard, except Canada's Savita Shienhmar finishing 6th on their second performance, after scoring 342 their first time out.

UK wise, Freddie and Calum continued their excellent season, and Calum bettered his previous best position of 30th with a 29th place. Points were slightly harder to come by than sometimes, but Adam Bissett recorded his 10th top 100 finish and Benji Martin got his highest ever finish, #137 after a previous best of #149. Jack Lawrence also registered his 50th Sudoku GP round with his 21st score of 400 or more.

[pinkagape]

Puzzle GP Round 5 results are out. Freddie secured his 25th podium place of his puzzle career with his 5th score over 1000 points. Meanwhile, Aleksei took his best score ever with his 2nd score over 500. Zoe Ashford finished in her highest puzzle position of 125th, and her 3rd score over 300.

[pinkagape]

Sudoku GP Round 6 results were out a little while ago. Freddie got his second top 10 sudoku finish with his third score over 800. Otherwise it was slim pickings for the UK. Adam Bissett got his 10th score of 400 or more while Mark Goodliffe got his 70th score of 300 or more (a strong hit rate from 78 appearances), and Aleksei Daniliuk got his fifth appearance in the top 200.

[pinkagape]

Puzzle GP Round 6 results are out and there's UK galore in the top 100! 11 including James, and Jeremy just outside at #102. Nobody broke their records, though it wasn't especially a high scoring round in the end. I enjoyed the fact that I solved just 4 puzzles and still ended up competitive. It wasn't my greatest puzzle choice in the end.

We can celebrate Freddie's 26th top 3 finish, James's 81st, Neil's 79th, Peter's 3rd and Todd's 2nd top 50 finish. As usual, I like looking elsewhere, and I'm celebrating Shenwei Lu's first appearance in the top 300 after posting their top score on their 6th appearance.