Welcome to Grandmaster Puzzles!

A logo, and a puzzle

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Welcome to the new puzzle blog from Thomas Snyder, aka “Dr. Sudoku”, 3-time world sudoku champion and author of many books of puzzles including “The Art of Sudoku”. Here you will find a range of logic puzzles including number placement puzzles (such as Sudoku and TomTom), object placement (such as Battleships and Star Battle), region division (such as Fillomino and Cave), shading (such as Nurikabe and Tapa), path/loop (such as Slitherlink and Masyu) and many more.

Puzzles will get progressively harder throughout the week, so there will be easy puzzles for beginners on Monday and Tuesday to start the week and much harder puzzles by Friday and Saturday. Eventually there will be a random mix of many puzzle types every week, but as I start I will focus on two types each week, with Sudoku and TomTom leading the way. Puzzles will typically post at 9:00 AM Pacific Time.

This puzzle blog will have a few unique features. First, I want to actively track (and reward) the puzzle solvers. At the bottom of each post is a “solved” button. If you enter the correct answer string, your solution will be logged in. Eventually there will be leaderboards, contests, and prizes for people solving the puzzles. So if you solve the puzzles, log your success here. Mark your favorite puzzles too. So if a lot of solvers for example like TomTom over other styles, then you’ll see more of them here — and more TomTom books published.

Each puzzle has a “difficulty” posted too. This is just a recommendation from the expert/World Puzzle Championship level solvers who have helped test all the puzzles. The time has three values: the “Master” time, and then an “Expert” time (3x) and a “Novice” time (10x). Whatever level solver you are, these ratings should give you a sense of how hard a puzzle might be, and also give you a real sense of how well you are solving if you want to time yourself. But don’t start the stopwatch if you are just here for fun!

For any puzzle you really like, click on the tags to the left for more examples. Besides the posted puzzles, I will be releasing books with all of these puzzle styles. For Sudoku and Sudoku Variations and TomTom I already have books available for purchase. For the other styles, new titles like “The Art of Puzzles” will be coming soon.

This will be an exciting project, and I hope to see you visiting here a lot in the future. And if you have any recommendations for new puzzle styles, or want to make your own puzzle contributions here, just email me to start a dialogue.

Rules: The puzzle in this post is in the GMPuzzles logo. This is a Wordoku with a repeated letter so follow standard sudoku rules with a slight twist.

Time Standard: Sudoku Master = 2:30, Expert = 7:30, Novice = 25:00

Answer Check: USING CAPITAL LETTERS, enter the 8th row from left to right, followed by a comma, and then the 5th column from top to bottom (e.g. “GMPUZZLES,GMPUZZLES”)

Solution: PDF

  • Solved in paint, so a little slow, plus I managed to break it twice (I’m sure that’s a reflection of my rustiness rather than anything about the puzzle which ended up being a nice light entry puzzle). I didn’t see an answer blank…

    • Avatar photo drsudoku says:

      In my pre-launch state, that was a bug of my own making but it is fixed and should be visible now. At the end of the post you’ll see a fave/solved button. If you click the “Solved” checkmark that should bring up a window to enter your answer. You’ll need to be logged into Dave Millar’s puzzle tracking to get credit since he developed the code.

  • Your Master times are pretty rough! I’m around 1.5x on those so far … at least I can beat the Expert times pretty easily.

    This was a cute start! The double Zs definitely make it harder on the brain.

    • Avatar photo drsudoku says:

      I’m setting them at ~top 5-10 in the world level. I guess I might want to start to call them “Grandmaster” times, and put “Master” at 2x. I’ll put it up to a vote after another few weeks.

  • hagriddler says:

    Congrats on the new blog !

  • tamz29 says:

    2″03″ –
    Probably because Thailand has way too much unnnecessary
    Alphadokus in their tournaments.

  • hagriddler says:

    Took me a while to figure out the correct way to cope with the twist, so my solve path kept breaking up…
    At this rate it will take me a while before I could call myself “novice” :-))

    Nice puzzle !

  • bromp says:

    This looks promising, and I hope that I will find the time to visit this blog from time to time.

    A hint to other puzzlers who do not see the Solve buttons below the puzzles: you may have to allow javascript for gmpuzzles.com and ajax.googleapis.com.

  • skynet says:

    Hi motris ..i dont get what i m supposed to do here? i did the standard way of solving these wordoku puzzles which is to correspond diff letters with diff digits..but some letters repeat in a row?! am i supposed to remove one of those repeating digits and treat it like a normal sudoku or is there something else more to the sudoku…. explain pls motris

  • Love these. What’s the easiest (or is there) way to print a daily puzzle out? Anything better than highlighting and “Print Selection”?

  • skynet says:

    5:53 .
    Was solving for fun .I know i could have been faster too.
    Is this the mystery post?!

    • Avatar photo drsudoku says:

      No, as I said this week the hidden contest is somewhere in the 60 puzzles I released. You are not looking for a Mystery Post, but rather a message that will tell you what to do.

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