Sunday is going to be a day when we feature solution videos to our puzzles. Today we’re pleased to have a video for this morning’s Consecutive Pairs Sudoku from Cracking the Cryptic / Simon Anthony.

Also, we have just relaunched a new version of our e-store for our puzzle PDF books, which should be much easier to use with more payment options, cart functionality, search functionality for authors and genres, notifications when PDFs are updated, …. Note that the old accounts / passwords will not work here but we can share prior purchases with you if you need to grab the downloads again.

We’re still doing some visual improvements as many of our books never had covers or online examples. We will likely highlight one old title each week with sample puzzles while we update the catalog.

For the whole month of June, we will have a 20% discount on all titles in the shop (automatically applied at checkout). So this is a great time to catch up on any past collections from GMPuzzles that you may have missed. And please tell us if you run into any issues with the new store.

Tomorrow marks the official restart of daily puzzle content here. The first week will feature a variety mix of puzzles across six genres, and later weeks in June will focus on Sudoku, Star Battle, and Pentominous puzzles. We have some other updates we’ll be rolling out alongside launch, including an update to our e-store, and more detail will be coming on that over the next day. For now, enjoy one last teaser puzzle with a countdown theme.

PDF

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

Theme: Countdown to 1

Author/Opus: This is the 358th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Consecutive Pairs Sudoku rules although this puzzle is formatted with bars and not dots for a different visual effect. (If a gray bar is given between two adjacent cells, then the two numbers in those cells must be consecutive. Note not all gray bars are given; adjacent cells without a bar may contain either consecutive numbers or nonconsecutive numbers.)

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for Consecutive Pairs Sudoku puzzles on this website. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Consecutive Pairs Sudoku to get started on. More Consecutive Pairs Sudoku puzzles can be found in The Art of Sudoku 2 and in Masterpiece Sudoku Mix 6: Consecutive Pairs Sudoku.

To enable our June reopening, Serkan Yürekli has stepped into a role as Managing Editor for the site. Serkan now oversees our puzzle submission and review process, assembles the web weeks, and has also brought new ideas for puzzle packet formatting, books, and other things you’ll see as we re-launch. As one small example, while we have always had an escalating set of puzzle difficulties from Monday to Saturday, we are now going to try to put star ratings (out of 5) on all puzzles for more comparison across weeks. We’re quite excited to have Serkan step into this larger role, and hope it increases the quantity of puzzles we can release without any change in the quality you have come to expect from GMPuzzles.

Enjoy this challenging Tapa (False) variation from Serkan as we count down the 8 days remaining.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the composite Yajilin mode where left click marks cells, right click marks dots in cells or X’s on edges, left click+drag draws lines.)

Theme: 8 (or 2 cubed)

Author/Opus: This is the 280th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster — and new managing editor — Serkan Yürekli.

Rules: Variation of Tapa rules. All clue digits are false and should be either one higher or one lower than the value given. (Note: Some corrected clue sets may be identical to their uncorrected versions, e.g. 1 2 becoming 2 1. Some corrected sets may contain zeroes, which have no effect on the remainder of the clue set.)

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other Tapa variations and this link for classic Tapa. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Tapa puzzles to get started on. More Tapa puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles, in Tapa and Variations, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles, all by Serkan Yürekli.

June 1st will be the reopening of GMPuzzles. In recent years we have had on weeks and off weeks, but with this relaunch we are planning to have content every week. Monday through Saturdays will be new puzzles, with increasing difficulty throughout the week. There will be a mix of variety weeks and single puzzle genre weeks. On Sundays we will be releasing solution images for all of the puzzles, as well as a solution video walkthrough for one of our puzzles. While these solutions have historically been “rewards” for our subscribers, we hope that sharing them more broadly will help expand our community and help people learn how to solve our hardest puzzles.

We’ll have info on some other changes soon; for now, enjoy this Countdown TomTom.

PDF

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

Theme: Countdown + 15 Spirals

Author/Opus: This is the 357th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard TomTom rules, using the integers 1-8.

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other TomTom. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest TomTom to get started on. More TomTom puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

It has certainly been a challenging start to 2020, but we’re excited to announce that we will be back with daily content starting in June. More info soon; for now, enjoy this Countdown Star Battle.

PDF

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

Theme: 22 Stars for 22 Days

Author/Opus: This is the 356th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Star Battle rules. Two stars per row, column, and region.

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other classic Star Battles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Star Battles to get started on. More Star Battle puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles, in the book Star Battle by JinHoo Ahn, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.