Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2019, selected from the 38 web posts in this category based on your FAVE votes:

Our first favorite puzzle was a bonus for our subscribers, a Star Battle from Murat Can Tonta with four interacting T’s framing the grid. (We are beginning to organize all of our web bonus puzzles into a new book so that those who missed these puzzles from 2014-2019 can see what they missed.)

Our next favorite puzzle came from Ashish Kumar, the most recent puzzlemaster to join the team. It combined Minesweeper and Battleship logic and required some outside of the box thinking.

For some reason I don’t fully understand, pi-themed puzzles are always popular on the site. Serkan Yürekli brought out a Digital Battleships puzzle that used the first 100 digits of pi and a nice series of outside clues to limit the grid.

Our top two puzzles both used the theme of “two” in different creative ways. Guest contributor Bryce Herdt made this challenging Pentopia puzzle with only two-way straight arrows as clues.

Leading to our best object placement puzzle of 2019, this quite unusual and very logically interesting Battleships puzzle by John Bulten.

All of these best Object Placement puzzles are collected in this PDF file.

A reminder that throughout June, as part of our reopening, we have a special 20% discount on all titles in the shop (automatically applied at checkout) so please check out the store if you want to purchase some puzzle PDFs.

Our most recent week of Star Battle puzzles can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have three video solution talkthroughs for this week. As I was the constructor for the Saturday puzzle, you can find my exact intended path in this video:

and you can also find my approaches to solving the Wednesday and Friday puzzles in these videos

Over this weekend, we have also completed the first part of a long-term project to add solutions to our web backlog. All puzzles from 2018 and 2019 now have posted PDFs of the solutions, and you can also grab their solutions from our weekly PDFs page.

Later today we will be back with our second “Best of 2019” post highlighting Object Placement puzzles, and also a post discussing thoughts on online solving tools for GMPuzzles. And this upcoming week we will focus on Pentominous puzzles.

PDF

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

Theme: Star Face

Author/Opus: This is the 359th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

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

Difficulty: 4 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:30, Master = 9:30, Expert = 19:00

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

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.

Here are our best Sudoku puzzles of 2019, selected from the 31 web posts in this category:

Our first favorite puzzle was a very nicely themed Killer Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli with a rocket theme and a visual countdown in the grid.

Guest contributor Chris Green put together a paired set of Tight Fit Sudoku with a really interesting challenge that stretched the way you tend to think about this style.

Our next two top Sudoku are both clueless varieties. First, from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku, is this clueless Arrow Sudoku.

Ashish Kumar made a clueless Thermo-Sudoku in preparation for the World Puzzle Championship that was also one of our top puzzles.

But the overall best sudoku of 2019 goes to an unusual puzzle which was a Birthday Surprise Sudoku from Prasanna Seshadri that was a nearly perfect puzzle for his 28th birthday.

All of these best Sudoku puzzles are collected in this PDF file.

Our most recent week of Sudoku puzzles can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

This week’s video solution talkthrough is for Grant Fikes’s Killer Sudoku puzzle (and I approached it as more of a blind solve tutorial as a change of pace as I hadn’t done the puzzle in awhile.)

We have also been highlight favorite old puzzles where we have available solution videos. Serkan Yürekli made this hard Killer Sudoku which we posted almost 6 years ago. If you haven’t tried it yet, please do; if you get stuck, here are some tips:

Later today we will be back with our first “Best of 2019” post highlighting Sudoku.

This coming week we will be featuring Star Battle puzzles.

A reminder that this June, as part of our reopening, we have a special 20% discount on all titles in the shop (automatically applied at checkout) so please check out the store if you want to purchase some puzzle PDFs.

Our first 2020 week of puzzles can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have been linked to the individual posts.

This week’s video talkthrough is for Elyot Grant’s interesting Fillomino puzzle.

Next week we will be featuring Sudoku puzzles including some variations.

It is great to be back, which means we met our goals of relaunching our e-book store alongside our weekly web puzzles. For the whole month of June, we have a 20% discount on all titles in the shop (automatically applied at checkout) so please check out the store if you want to purchase some puzzle PDFs.

There are more updates to come later in the year as we strive to improve the GMPuzzles community experience. One of those areas to is expand our Sunday content, including a return of our “Ask Dr. Sudoku” column. One topic we will plan to discuss soon is related to a comment from this week’s Star Battle puzzle — how should we integrate electronic solving options to our web posts and books. If you have other questions or suggested topics for us, please share as comments and we’ll select some for future posts.

We also are overdue to post our “Best Puzzles of 2019”, and we will start that next Sunday with our Best Sudoku of 2019. But as an early preview, and as the extra solution video for this week, we wanted to link to one of our very best (and trickiest) puzzles of 2019, this Fillomino from John Bulten from January 2019. In case you missed it, please try it now; tips if you get stuck are in the solution video below.

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.

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.