Our past Star Battle week is gathered in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More books containing Star Battle puzzles can be found here.
The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:
The next week of puzzles will feature Tight Fit Sudoku and Consecutive Pairs Sudoku, both types in our latest Masterpiece Sudoku Mixes (see upcoming post for more details).
We’ve just published the first volume of a new series of “Starter Packs”, books with good easy to medium (Monday to Wednesday) puzzles for some of our different puzzle genres. The first volume, Starter Pack 1: Fillomino features one of our favorite region division puzzles and comes with 30 hand-crafted puzzles by Grant Fikes.
This is also the first e-book from us that includes a set of links to Penpa-Edit versions of the puzzles for online solving. While we are still working to create a more immersive online solving experience in the future, people who buy this book will find a set of 30 web-links at the back to be able to digitally solve all of the puzzles too.
The next Starter Pack will be coming out in a couple months and will feature Tapa by Serkan Yürekli.
Our past variety mix week, with slightly easier than usual puzzles to pair with our “Starter Pack” series, has its puzzles gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. We’re putting the finishing touches on Starter Pack 1: Fillomino by Grant Fikes (including building very basic digital solving/Penpa option for the book) and will release that in next day.
The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:
The next week of puzzles will feature Star Battle, one of our favorite puzzle styles, and will have five classic and one variation during the week.
I wanted to start some of our 2022 updates for the year by sharing this draft schedule for our books, with most detail set for the first six months of the year. We are continuing our Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly and Masterpiece Sudoku Mix series that we launched in 2021, and also starting a new, accessible puzzle series of “Starter Packs” for people to get into some of our different logic styles. In the same style as the Intro to GMPuzzles books, these Starter Packs will contain ~30 puzzles for ~$1.50 and all puzzles are from 1-2.5 stars in approximate difficulty. Eventually, as we release these books, we will also rebuild the web flow for these styles so that there is a way besides the “blog” to learn about the puzzles, how to use Penpa, and so on.
Book list:
1. Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri (January)
2. Starter Pack 1: Fillomino by Grant Fikes (February)
3. Masterpiece Sudoku Mixes 5 and 6 (Tight Fit Sudoku and Consecutive Pairs Sudoku) (early March)
4. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 3 featuring Thermo-Sudoku, Skyscrapers, Battleships, Cross the Streams, Kuromasu, Balance Loop (late March)
5. Starter Pack 2: Tapa by Serkan Yürekli (April)
6. Slitherlink and Variations 2 (April)
7. Tapa and Variations 3 (May)
8. Starter Pack 3: TomTom by Thomas Snyder (June)
9. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 4 featuring Even/Odd Sudoku, Japanese Sums, Minesweeper, Nurikabe, Pentominous, Castle Wall (late June)
10. Masterpiece Sudoku Mixes 7 and 8 (July)
11. Starter Pack 4: Slitherlink by Takeya Saikachi (late July/early August)
12. Loop Variety Collection 2 (August)
13. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 5 (September)
14. TBD title (October)
15. Starter Pack 5: Star Battle by JinHoo Ahn (October)
16. TBD title (November)
17. Starter Pack 6: Jigsaw Sudoku by Thomas Snyder (December)
18. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 6 (December)
The eighteen book schedule is ambitious but lets us diversify the kinds of titles and different puzzles we are publishing while also taking up new goals like getting Penpa/digital solving forms of these by sometime this year.
Not on the “official” list, but part of projects I am working on separately, are releases containing our old patron puzzles including our “Giant” puzzles, starting a Giants annual book, and rereleasing some of my older books of sudoku variants and TomTom puzzles. There is also a very different but interesting puzzle collection book that has been stuck in editing that we hope to get out.
Paired with this schedule, we have also started to look at how easily we can set up a “subscription” in our book store to automatically release these titles to people who want to have all books in a given series like GPQ or who want all books that we publish.
Our past week introducing Aqre puzzles as an “official” shading puzzle style on the site has its puzzles gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. Aqre puzzles are one of the genres in our e-book Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri.
The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:
In a few minutes we will also be releasing another Aqre puzzle as a Sunday Stumper.
The next week of puzzles will be an “easy” variety mix, with just easy-to-medium difficulty puzzles in six different styles. This week will also mark the release of our first “Starter Pack” book with a 30 puzzle Fillomino set of easy to medium grids by Grant Fikes for those looking to get into this puzzle style. More details on that book series, as well as our 2022 book publication schedule, will be shared soon.
Our most recent week of shading variety puzzles is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. All the genres this week feature in our e-book: Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri.
The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:
The next week of puzzles will continue on the shading theme from last week, with a full week of Aqre puzzles as well as a Sunday Stumper. We hope you enjoy seeing more of this puzzle style that we’re adding into our official rotation this year.
As promised, I’ve now finished making a video describing all the steps that went on before, during, and after constructing my milestone 400th post. For those looking for something different on our YouTube channel, check out the video there.
PS: I make a “promise” in the video that if we get to 1,000 YouTube subscribers this year, I’ll make a new milestone puzzle around that idea. Do with this info what you will.
PPS: We are continuing to explore different kinds of YouTube content this year, so feel free to comment on more things you’d be interested in seeing besides daily solution videos.
We’ve just published our next e-book, the Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri. In this book, the five shading puzzle styles Canal View, Nurimeizu, Heyawake, Aqre, and Yajisan Kazusan receive the Grandmaster Puzzles treatment with elegant, hand-crafted puzzles by Prasanna. There are a total of 54 puzzles, with 10 or 11 in each of the styles; you’ll surely get a workout in shading cells as you learn how to advance from the easy beginning grids to the very hard and large concluding puzzles.
This upcoming week of puzzles will feature original puzzles (not from the book) across these five puzzle styles.
Our most recent week of TomTom is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF.
The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:
My constructor-side video for the 400th post TomTom is also coming up later this week now here.
The next week of puzzles will feature five shading puzzle styles we don’t regular post; these same styles will also be featured in a book released later today from Prasanna Seshadri. Many people have asked when we might be adding more puzzles to our “official” rotation, and one of the puzzles this week will be getting that status in Week 5 as we add a few puzzles in 2022 to the regular publication schedule.
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: 400 Posts
Author/Opus: This is the 400th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.
Rules: Standard TomTom rules, except the digit set is unknown. This puzzle uses 8 distinct non−negative integers.
Difficulty: 5 stars
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 10:30, Master = 20:30, Expert = 41:00
Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here. A video telling the story of how this puzzle was constructed by Thomas is here.
Note: Follow this link for classic TomTom and this link for TomTom variations. 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 TomTom collection, in The Art of Puzzles, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.