The 24-Hour Puzzle Championship is known as the puzzle marathon which is held every year in Hungary. Participants in this puzzle championship have to solve the puzzle in this championship continuously for 24 hours. The participants have to solve 13 times 100 minutes puzzle part each for 1000 points. There's only 10 minutes break between the two sets, except for two 'big breaks' with 20 minutes (when they have dinner and breakfast). And that is altogether 1440 minutes = 24 hours. In fact, there will be 14 sets of puzzles will be created for this and each participant has to skip one puzzle set. This is to accommodate puzzle authors as participants. If someone has provided a puzzle set for this championship, that person will miss his own set while participating. Nowadays many authors across the world are providing puzzles for this championship even though some of them will not be able to participate in this championship. The largest event was in 2005, Eger - when we had 77 participants (in the beginning there was only 14).
The first championship was in 2000. Some photographs of this championship can be found on Gyorgy Istvan's Picasa account. It was organized every year always in Budapest - with few exceptions, when 24HPC held the right after the World Puzzle Championship (WPC) in Eger.
Originally, there was an international Crossword Puzzle Compiler championship in the 1980s between the Eastern European countries, named Puzzle Marathon - where each country compiled crosswords in its own language (on the given sheets there were some given well-known person and town names, so they have no opportunity to prepare puzzles in advance). And that lasts for 24 hours. In 1999, at the WPC in Istanbul. Mr. Ede Markos (member of the Hungarian Team in 1999-2000) came up with the idea to do something similar to the Puzzle Marathon, but with logical puzzles. Then after a short discussion, it was agreed to organize this event. In the first two years, there were only Hungarian participants, later this event became an international event. And now beyond the World Puzzle Championship and World Sudoku Championship, it became the largest on-spot yearly international championship.
Each year there at 10-15 organizers who correct the puzzle sheets and give the result within a certain time. Some of them worked for 24 hours - just like the puzzlers.
Thanks to István György for providing above mentioned interesting information regarding this championship.
In the year 2015, The Puzzle Marathon will be held again in Budapest, 17-19 April 2015. This year Pál Madarassy will be again in charge of the puzzle director position. More information about this championship can be found on the official Facebook page for this championship.
From India,, Prasanna, Rakesh, Ashish, and Swaroop are providing two sets of puzzles for this championship. Looking forward to the participants' feedback for this championship.
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