Dr. Gyora Benedek

Dr. Gyora Benedek is a prominent computer scientist from Israel. In his spare time, he invents and develops games and logic puzzles, including the worldwide hits Lights Out, NimX and iTop. Fluent in seven languages, he was born in Transylvania and now lives in Israel. Active in many different sports, he particularly likes scuba diving, which is where his story began.

Inventing Hidato is a story that Benedek tells best himself.

"It was sunny day in Eilat, as always. I was scuba diving. The reef looked beautiful, fish were playfully swimming around me and, above, the sky looked even bluer through the Red Sea's clear water. Suddenly a huge school of small fish swam by me. They were swimming so fast that I could not follow them with my eyes. All I could see were spots along the route they passed, places where they made their sudden turns. Then they disappeared behind a big coral reef to emerge again at an unexpected spot. It was dizzying and puzzling - maybe that was what made me think of a puzzle. Can I connect the dots and reconstruct the fishes' crazy swimming pattern? Can I create a puzzle like that?

"The diving wasn't the same anymore; I could hardly wait to get to my computer and start testing the idea. It was immediately clear to me that to be a good puzzle, it must have a unique solution and that solving it should not require any trial and error. I was up all that night, testing many variations. At first the puzzles were too easy, and then I could hardly solve them. It wasn't easy to find the right algorithms, to strike the balance between too easy and too hard. This took many months of hard work, testing and re-testing until it was just right. Meanwhile, I found several variants, move types, puzzle shapes and most of all - a lot of fun."