All the puzzles from last week have been grouped in this PDF. While Gemini continues, this marks the official end of our twin “Twin Weeks”. I hope you enjoyed the ~24 puzzles over the last couple weeks. I say ~24 as even I’m not sure I’ve found them all.

Next week will debut a slightly new format idea which is the split author week. I’ve let both Prasanna and Serkan focus on a single puzzle type and develop it over three puzzles. Prasanna will take the first three days with Tapa-Like Loop and Serkan will take the last three days with Light and Shadow, a new variant for this site.

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters is a Skyscrapers by Grant Fikes.

All the puzzles from last week have been grouped in this PDF. There were a lot of puzzles last week, so even if you think you’ve solved them all it might be worth taking another look.

This week marks Grant Fikes’ birthday, and we will have an unusual mix for the week with puzzles from Grant, Prasanna Seshadri, and guest contributor Bobby Liu. The theme will be quite obvious from the start this week at least. The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters is a Fillomino by Grant Fikes.

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or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a number entry mode.)

Theme: Logical

Author/Opus: This is the 178th puzzle from Thomas Snyder aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Fillomino rules.

Answer String: For each cell in the marked rows/columns, enter the area of the polyomino it belongs to. Enter both digits of any two-digit values. Start with the 5th row, followed by a comma, followed by the 5th column.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:00, Master = 4:00, Expert = 8:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other classic Fillomino. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Fillomino puzzles to get started on.

All the puzzles from last week have been grouped in this PDF.

This coming week is another variety week (highlight to view):

Monday: Nurikabe by Prasanna Seshadri
Tuesday: Masyu by Grant Fikes
Wednesday: Tapa-Like Loop by Prasanna Seshadri
Thursday: LITS by Craig Kasper
Friday: Fillomino by Thomas Snyder
Saturday: Statue Park by Prasanna Seshadri

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Fillomino (Cipher) by Grant Fikes.

We’ll have a little more discussion in the comments here later after the dust settles about the puzzles, but we hope everyone enjoyed today’s US Puzzle Championship.

Our puzzlemasters contributed several puzzles to the competition including:

Crosslink by Grant Fikes
Double Minesweeper by Serkan Yürekli
Nurikabe Path by Thomas Snyder
Star Search by Thomas Snyder
Tapa by Serkan Yürekli
Tapa View by Prasanna Seshadri
Wind Shield by Serkan Yürekli
Wordmark by Serkan Yürekli

All the puzzles from last week’s Araf collection have been grouped in this PDF. It seemed to have been well received as a genre so we may choose to feature it more regularly in our rotation. I personally enjoy it a bit more than other intuitive styles like Numberlink, but that could just be a result of it feeling “new” having only solved about twenty Araf puzzles.

This coming week has a mini-theme to it, perhaps “something old, something new”, as half the puzzles will be from guest contributors who have made some interesting puzzles. The rest are from Grant Fikes, who is not so much “old” as familiar. He’s been contributing about a puzzle a day since the start of the year; there will be a collection of the Foxger’s puzzles coming later this year as a book/e-book from GMPuzzles which will be a great book for solvers just learning how to solve some of these types.

The exact schedule for the week is this (highlight to view):

Monday: Star Battle by Grant Fikes
Tuesday: Skyscrapers by Grant Fikes
Wednesday: Fillomino by Walker Anderson
Thursday: Yajilin by Grant Fikes
Friday: Place by Product by Ravi Kumar Macherla
Saturday: Tapa by Murat Can Tonta

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Masyu by Prasanna Seshadri.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a shading mode.)

Theme: Aisles

Author/Opus: This is the 177th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Divide the grid into some regions formed of edge-adjacent squares. Each cell is part of one region, and each region should contain exactly two given numbers. Each region must have an area that is strictly between those numbers (This means, for two number clues A and B with A < B, the area C fulfills A < C < B).

Answer String: Enter the number of cells in each connected group (between bold lines) in the marked rows. For the example above, this is “34,121111,4111”.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 0:45, Master = 1:15, Expert = 2:30

Solution: PDF

Note: Araf is a relatively new puzzle for us on GMPuzzles. Follow this link for other Araf.

All the puzzles from last week’s variety week have been grouped in this PDF. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve also been highlighting some championship puzzles written by puzzlemaster Serkan Yürekli. If you’d like to see his entire 24HPC puzzle set, go here. The Japan dakejanai Zukei dakejanai Puzzle Championship puzzles we featured have not been released yet, but may eventually be here.

Serkan has been an instrumental designer in sharing good ideas from Japan with a wider, western audience; his OAPC series, WPC puzzles, and even his contributions here at Grandmaster Puzzles (like last week’s Dominion originally by Naoki Inaba) are often styles adapted from puzzles he finds in Japanese championships. Next week will focus on another such type, originally a Japanese style 相ダ部屋 that was renamed Araf, meaning “purgatory” in Turkish, by Serkan when I first ran into it at the 2010 World Puzzle Championship. We will have some classic puzzles, and some interesting minor variations.

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Cross the Streams by Grant Fikes. Our Master and above patrons also received a puzzle we believe to be the largest Tapa ever made (it is certainly the largest Tapa Serkan Yürekli has ever written). If you haven’t considered supporting our website yet, now would be a good time to do so.

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or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between ship placement and shading modes. In ship placement mode, right click gives sea, left click gives circle/square, left click and drag for rounded ships.)

Theme: Logic and Near Symmetry (the row and column clues break into mostly symmetric groups)

Author/Opus: This is the 176th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Battleships rules. Use the indicated fleet.

Answer String: For each row from top to bottom, enter the number of the first column from the left where a ship segment appears (enter both digits if a two-digit number). If the row is empty, enter 0. Enter these numbers as a single string with no separators.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:00, Master = 1:30, Expert = 3:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other classic Battleships. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Battleships to get started on.

All the puzzles from last week’s Skyscrapers collection have been grouped in this PDF. Many thanks again to Roland Voigt for the fantastic Skyscrapers; he even made some walkthroughs for the classic puzzles. You’ll find more of Roland’s puzzles here and other content linked from his blog.

Next week will be another variety week with a range of puzzles including a few new variations (highlight to view):

Monday: Battleships by Thomas Snyder
Tuesday: Slitherlink (Sheep and Wolves) by Grant Fikes
Wednesday: TomTom by Grant Fikes
Thursday: Dominion by Serkan Yürekli
Friday: Thermo-Skyscraper Sudoku by Hans van Stippent
Saturday: Heavy Dots by Prasanna Seshadri

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Fillomino by Prasanna Seshadri.

We will also have a few bonus puzzles throughout the week from the recent competition puzzles from Serkan Yürekli. This week they will all be Double Minesweeper puzzles which is a style we plan to feature in a future title from Grandmaster Puzzles.