One month just flew by didn’t it? 28 solvers headed out to Tamziania, dug up fossil pieces, assembled the Sudoku Mammoth and eventually conquered the mighty beast. Here is the list of solvers in the order of submission: Swaroop Guggilam, Fred Stalder, Stefan Tomlins, Zoran Tanasic, Oliver Rubio, Antonis Lalatsas, Branko Ceranic, Valerie Alexandre, Nikola Zivanovic, Valerie Garcia, Matt Stephans, Nick Brady, Franck Wallez, Prasanna Seshadri, Neil Brown, Todd Geldon, Mark Goodliffe, Eva Myers, Joshua Zucker, Sumet Juariyamark, James McGowan, Ivan Koswara, Zbigniew Laskowski, Rakesh Rai, Stefano Forcolin, Grayson Holmes, Manea Constantin and Bastien Vial-Jaime.
*[ETA: Fixed typos] 
At the conclusion of our exhausting project, I asked solvers to guess who wrote the puzzles that form the fur of the Sudoku Mammoth. Since me and Sinchai aren’t that prolific (yet), most of the responses were probably guesses anyway. Certain points were allotted for each correct guesses and the maximum total is 50 points.
Note that all the point values in the table below are doubled (since I got lazy with decimals) but this doesn’t affect the standings.
Here are the results with the top 5 being omitted: 
Please don’t be discouraged by the standings, as they are most likely to be guesses and someone has to win. So who’s missing?
Let’s introduce our top 5:
First to submit was Swaroop Guggilam, he was either the first or second to send in an entry throughout last three events. What an early bird! Coincidentally, second to submit was Swiss sudoku legend Fred Stalder, one of my favourite sudoku authors. This is his first entry at SOTR. He writes for many offline and online venues and all the puzzles are collected in his blog; and you can find that address in my blogroll. Two more newcomers made it to the top 5; one is Valerie Garcia; thanks to Fred who posted about it in the French forum, she and several other French names found out about our expedition. The next lucky newcomer is Stefano Forcolin who I’ve met and exchanged a few words with at the 2013 WSC. Lastly is Eva Myers, she made it to the final 8 of rock-paper-scissors way back in the first Nikoli Hurdles, good to see her back!
Now the final results…! 
Congratulations to Valerie Garcia from France scoring a whopping 94/100!
Interesting that Fred actually had more correct guesses at 9/10 but Valerie’s total is one point (initially 0.5 before the double) higher. More interesting is that one more competitor also scored 8/10, which is Zbigniew Laskowski who ended up at 6th place because his two incorrect guesses were worth higher points.
Again, all points were random and pre-determined which shows how it came down to luck for this little prize draw. For winning, Valerie will receive the Mammoth Book of New Sudoku by Gareth Moore. We have now come to the end of Sudoku Excavation. I will post solutions and comments about the whole event throughout the next few weeks. I would to thank co-author Sinchai and all 28 of you who’ve made this event so enjoyable.
Construction of my next event is already underway and it is scheduled for April. All I can say is it will include a variety of puzzles combined into one nice little theme. Pop back here for more details or subscribe to get notifications in case you forget!
Bye for now!
Somewhere Over the Rainbow 