2003: 12th WPC Papendal, The Netherlands.
The 12th World Puzzle Championship were held in The Netherlands in 2003. Germany's Ulrich Voigt won his 3rd titel in 4 years beating Wei-Hwa Huang of the USA in a tensed final. In the team event Germany took their first ever world title just ahead of the United States (2nd) and host The Netherlands (3rd).
Detailed results are available on Hans Eendebak's home page as well as some photo's;
Almost all the puzzles of the WPC as well as the official high-resolution teamphoto's can be found on the Puzzelsport home page.
Also some pictures of the puzzle action are on this site.
Wei-Hwa Huang wrote the official WPF-report this year.

Prior to the WPC there were some upsets in the qualifiers: In the US/Canadian qualification round were, for the first time, four US-team tickets up for grabs. Wei-Hwa Huang and Roger Barkan were clear ahead of the rest of the US puzzlers, we got two new names on the US-entry form for this years WPC: Todd Geldon and Michael Miller. Zack Butler and Ronald Osher, the former team USA members, just failed to qualify. In Canada Byron Calver is the best puzzler. From the international puzzlers only Germany's former WPC champion (on two occasions) Ulrich Voigt was able to score more than 300 points.

The Dutch National final saw three new names in the top 4. So three rookies will accompany Niels Roest, who won his fifth consecuative National titel, in the quest for gold in this years WPC.
The Germans, who did the same puzzles as the Dutch, saw only one change in their team: Roland Voigt will be replaced by Marian Kraus (3rd), Michael Ley came in 2nd, Gerd Prull-Aden in 4th place. Ulrich Voigt won the titel with 477 out of a possible 506 (!) points (including bonusses). In comparison: Niels Roest "only" scored 343 points...
The Belgians, who also took the Dutch test, were playing for two tickets. Sebastien Leroy and Bart Leemans were given a wildcard for the Belgian team. Claude Desset and Philippe Niederkorn complete this years Belgian team, so no surprises here. In Brno, after their third place (just ahead of the Dutch) they claimed they were only warming up for this years event, beating the Dutch on their home ground. We wish them the best of luck!

Copyright 2001-2003, Tim Peeters
Last updated: November 1st 2003