Sunday Update and Solutions: Happy 10th anniversary

Tomorrow marks an important anniversary for Grandmaster Puzzles. On 12/12/12 at 12:12:12 PM (PT) I emailed out my first business plan/organizing documents to the original group of GMPuzzles team members. A few weeks later marked the first blog posts on the site, as well as a new journey in my life as I’d just made a hard decision to leave a science role/project I’d been working on for several years and relocated to Seattle, aiming to rediscover my goals in life starting with Grandmaster Puzzles.

A lot has changed in the time since. For GMPuzzles, this includes a much larger group of contributing puzzlemasters and other authors, Serkan becoming my partner in GMPuzzles as managing editor, regular YouTube solving videos, and digital solving options via Penpa-Edit for all new web posts and some of our books. Professionally and personally, I’ve also gone through a lot from (f)unemployment for a year in 2013 to growing responsibilities as a scientist and team leader, moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area, all while still supporting GMPuzzles through time and money.

Throughout these years though nothing has changed in our mission to bring you “hand-crafted logic puzzles, by the best puzzle designers, for all who love puzzles”. We’ve posted over 2,600 free web puzzles, released over 55 books/collections including several thousand more original puzzles, and never published a “broken” puzzle with an error in the puzzle art, even if I’ve caused a fair share of typos on our posts through the years.

A lot of thoughts come to mind thinking back through this GMPuzzles journey to date, and we’ll be writing more as we hit the end of the year about what are plans are for 2023 and beyond. We expect to make some changes (doing more of some things, less of others) as we update our business plan and explore other new paths to get revenue by supporting other puzzle projects and competitions. For now, let me share my thanks with everyone on the GMPuzzles team, everyone who has ever submitted a puzzle, and you the audience for solving our puzzles and adding your comments to the website. This community of puzzlers has been great to see come together, to support each other including me through some tough times. I’m excited for what comes next.

If you’ve enjoyed our web content, please continue to support the site by sharing gmpuzzles with your friends, by buying some of our books or by making a donation using the button in the menu to the left to give back to our puzzle authors.

Zooming back to the regular content, our most recent week of puzzles to highlight the “Starter Pack” series is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can find all of our Starter Pack books in our e-store, and the 6th volume of “Jigsaw Sudoku” will be released in 2023.

The daily puzzle “talkthrough” videos are on the posts and linked below.

Like this most recent week, our last two weeks of the year will focus on upcoming books starting with the “Loop Variety Collection 2” where we will have some less common loop styles this week including some from the genres in that collection. We’ll also have an unusual Sunday Stumper in one week. Our last week of blog puzzles will then focus on styles from Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6 as we close out ten years of puzzles.

  • M says:

    Congratulations dr sudoku and everyone on the team for 10 years strong. Amazing milestone. This site has now become a daily 9AM routine and i find myself going back whenever i am on a break. I found myself slowly learning about the different authors and their puzzle style. It has played a bigger role than just curating puzzle and turned into a community in its own

    Here is to 10 more amazing years!

  • SS says:

    Many congratulations on creating the best puzzle website on the planet! I’m very appreciative of everyone’s efforts.

  • bert says:

    Congratulations to you, Thomas, and the whole team! Your effort is hugely appreciated, and your puzzles are a great daily companion, especially in these crazier times we’re living in.

    Here’s to the next 10 years 😀

  • nkm says:

    Happy anniversary! Thanks to you and all contributors for the amazing puzzles!

  • Siena says:

    Congratulations! This site is amazing, and it’s such a privilege to be able to access all of these incredible puzzles for free. I hope to improve my speed and accuracy over time and, to that end, several of the books are on my wish list this year. Thank you so much for this gift to all of us who love puzzles

  • T says:

    Congratulations Thomas and team on this milestone. I am a relative latecomer having only discovered your puzzles this year. They are now a highlight of my day and, for this gift, I thank you all.

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