The gray that has canopied the Vineyard of late opened to blue skies on Saturday, but twelve logic-savvy gamesters spent the afternoon indoors slumped over tabletops in the meeting room of the Oak Bluffs Public Library. Equipped with reading glasses and spare pencils, the poker-faced crew absorbed themselves in competition, filling blank squares with lead-drawn numbers and letters as contestants in the Vineyard Gazette-sponsored Crossword and Sudoku Challenge.

“On your mark, get set, go!” sang reference librarian Mat Bose. On “Go!” the contestants tightened the grips on their pencils and zeroed in on the logic traps before them. Contestants could participate in the timed crossword or Sudoku competition. Volunteer judges docked one minute from time scores as a penalty for each incorrect answer. The title of winner, along with a Gazette coffee mug and Bunch of Grapes gift card, was granted to contestants with the lowest time scores.

Kurt Freund of West Tisbury won the 152-clue crossword challenge in 18 minutes and 15 seconds. “It’s not just letters versus numbers,” said Mr. Freund, explaining the different skill sets demanded by each game. “There’s a certain amount of logic in crossword puzzles, but not really. It’s a lot of vocab[ulary] . . . Sudoku is really pure logic. It’s not math at all.” He said the win sneaked up on him. “I put a letter in and I was looking for all the [blank] ones I had left out and — I was done!”

Jean Cargill of Edgartown won the Sudoku challenge in 13 minutes and 48 seconds. Ms. Cargill participates in the challenge each year. She spent months polishing for the competition that began in 2007 and has traditionally been held in winter at the Chilmark Free Public Library. In February, with no word of a date for the annual affair, she ceased practice. Then last week, a friend phoned Ms. Cargill with news that the competition was on and would be held this year in Oak Bluffs. Ms. Cargill quickly got to work. She brushed up with daily visits to the New York Times online daily Sudoku puzzles. These online games are equipped with an optional “hint” feature that guides players when they’re stuck. “That’s how I really learned to kick it up a notch,” she said. Ms. Cargill revealed her winning strategy: “I try not to be systematic and just see where there are holes.”

Sudoku runner-up George Balco, with a time of 15 minutes and 38 seconds, said he dabbled in crossword puzzles for a few years, but ultimately found them “boring” or “too hard” — and never in between. “I find crossword puzzles are more and more out of date with movies [and] television shows . . . I took this as a challenge that’s not out of date. We’re still using the same numbers,” the Vineyard Haven resident said, trailing into a warm, quiet laugh. “There’s always a spot where you have to make a leap. You get the easy stuff . . . and then if you make an incorrect leap, it ends up like trash.”

Ms. Cargill was runner-up in the 2008 competition. She lost to Mr. Balco. This year, the reigning top two swapped ranks. “[Mr. Balco] turned his in seven and a half minutes before me, but he had six wrong answers. And he still won,” Ms. Cargill said of the 2008 competition. “I had the first perfect paper and I came in second.”

“You look like you were taking the SATs in here,” said Mr. Bose the reference librarian to the contestants. And like the SATs, the most prepared players had a leg up. Three contestants who arrived without a stash of back-up pencils said the pencils provided by the library were poorly shaven. A slim layer of wood extending to the lead pencil tip impeded the speed strategy of Donna Dube of Rhode Island. “I think I was being sabotaged!” joked Ms. Dube, who joined the competition while on a weeklong Vineyard vacation.

Richard Barbieri of Sengekontacket participated in the crossword challenge with little trace of competitive spirit. Scoring a perfect puzzle in just under 25 minutes, he placed third. “It was a lot of fun. This is the first time I’ve been in a competition since spelling bees. Now I’m competing in crosswords. Well, time passes.”

A complete list of top winners follows.

Crossword: first place, Kurt Freund, zero errors, 18:15; second place, Steve Auerbach, one error, 23:05; third place, Richard Barbieri, zero errors, 24:39.

Sudoku: first place, Jean Cargill, 13:48; second place, George Balco, 15:38; third place, Donna Dube, 23:32.