Here are our best Number Placement puzzles of 2021 selected from the 58 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

Some of the best puzzles start with a simple premise, and Grant Fikes’ TomTom (Twins) that duplicates clue values — but doesn’t share those values except for the cage signs — was an enjoyable puzzle concept from last year and one of our Best of 2021 puzzles.

Another idea of duplication, this time within clue entries, led to this challenging Kakuro (Duplicate) by Thomas Snyder, “Nothing Unusual to See Here”.

2021 brought a new contributing puzzlemaster to the site in JinHoo Ahn, who constructed several of the best puzzles of the year. In this category, two of his Skyscrapers puzzles got a lot of attention. First was this easier (but unusual) Skyscrapers called “Triplets”.

Getting even more votes and tying for our best number placement puzzle of 2021 was this Skyscrapers (Cipher) puzzle also by JinHoo Ahn with a compass direction theme in the letter clues and an interesting logical path to follow as well.

Sharing the top billing for Best Number Placement puzzle of 2021 is this Japanese Sums by Prasanna Seshadri. While not yet a regular style for the site, we are seriously considering adding in this genre to the site after seeing a few creative Japanese Sums puzzles during this year including this “Stopped on the Way Back” theme with increasing number series clues.

We’ll start our Best of 2021 posts with some stats for the year.

2021 was a “full” year for us with over 320 web puzzles on the site, as well as twelve book releases including our first volumes of Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly and the Masterpiece Sudoku Mix series. All told we released over 40 hours of web content and over 80 hours of book content (based off median solve times). In past years, when I’ve been changing jobs and/or moving cities, we would have to pause the site for a bit. Now with Serkan Yürekli as managing editor we have gotten to a regular publication schedule even when my science work has been chaotic (and this past year of COVID research and trying to balance time in SF and Seattle was chaotic). So kudos to Serkan and the other parts of the GMPuzzles team for keeping us on track. I’ll have more thoughts on our progress through the year in our OKR posts in the next week.

In reviewing our favorite puzzles of the year, we will start with Sudoku which was featured in 55 webposts this year. As in years past, we selected the top Sudoku by reviewing FAVE votes, web comments, and tested comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

We introduced “Sunday Stumpers” as a new concept this year and our first Best of winner was a challenging Killer Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri, “Y Go Extra?”

A few classic Sudoku stood out during the year. While primarily needing basic steps, the narrow solving path and challenging deductions of this “Two Snakes” Sudoku by Ashish Kumar got many favorite votes.

Another variation, Killer Su-Do-Ku by Michael Rios, got even more votes of approval despite its very difficult challenge.

Our two favorite sudoku of the year both came from Thomas Snyder / Dr. Sudoku, including this “Gridlocked” Sudoku that has a really interesting collision of logical steps to tease apart the answer.

The top sudoku of 2021, as well as one of the Top 3 overall puzzles for 2021, was this “Christmas Tree”-themed Thermo-Sudoku that was part of our last official week of 2021. The visual and logical theme elements worked together in this creative construction that got a lot of FAVE votes in a very short time.

Here are our best Sudoku puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 32 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

With 1 day left before our official reopen, Dr. Sudoku shared this minimal clue “countdown” Consecutive Pairs Sudoku puzzle that got a good number of FAVE votes.

A few months later, guest contributor Bryce Herdt’s Thermo-Sudoku ran “hot” with our solvers, with a nice visual theme and fun solving path to the answer.

While on the easier side, this “Big X” Consecutive Pairs Sudoku from Thomas Snyder was another favorite sudoku puzzle from the year.

A few classic sudoku got strong reviews through the year, but none more so than this excellent Sudoku by Swaroop Guggilam which was clearly one of our Best 2020 Sudoku.

Our final best of 2020 Sudoku comes from Ashish Kumar who made an XV Sudoku with a theme referring to the letters, and a pretty minimal path taking advantage of the “XV rules” throughout.

Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 33 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

This Star Battle puzzle from Thomas Snyder (our first in many months that announced we were coming back) got the most FAVE votes for the year, but probably as much for the news as for the puzzle itself, with 22 stars to be placed with 22 days before re-launch.

Serkan Yürekli wrote this favorite Battleships with a slightly unusual solving path that solvers enjoyed.

Guest contributor JinHoo Ahn wrote another of our Best of 2020 puzzles with this “Double Numbers” Battleships with a very elegant theme and solving path.

2020 featured a lot of Star Battle puzzles on the site and in our store; this Star Battle from Ashish Kumar with a nice symmetric set of regions got a good response from our solvers.

Our final best of 2020 in object placement came in October from Murat Can Tonta, with a Statue Park themed around the corner placements.

Here are our best Number Placement puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 32 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

Our reopening announcement puzzles got a lot of attention and Thomas Snyder’s TomTom puzzle with two spirals counting down 15 days to go was a favorite Number Placement puzzle of 2020.

John Bulten constructed another great TomTom variation, TomTom (Cipher), where solvers appreciated the different logical steps to get to the one solution.

Blending the “thermometer” constraint with standard Skyscraper rules led to this clueless Thermo-Skyscrapers puzzle from Serkan Yürekli that got favorable feedback.

Another Skyscrapers puzzle that was well liked was this challenging 6×6 puzzle by Ashish Kumar with a fairly narrow logical path.

Our final Best of 2020 in Number Placement came from Prasanna Seshadri: this
Kakuro puzzle with a fun (but hard) solving path.

Here are our best Shading puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 32 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

A few of our best Shading puzzles were “Skyscrapers” variations with outside clues driving the solve. The first of these comes from guest contributor Freddie Hand: Tapa (Skyscrapers).

More shading + skyscrapers came soon thereafter from Prasanna Seshadri with this great Kurotto (Skyscrapers) puzzle.

Many April Fool’s Days ago I made an audiobook TomTom set of puzzles (that was not just a set of fools) which was followed a few years later by a Cross the Streams (audiobook) by Grant Fikes. Grant revisited this clever idea in 2020 with a new Cross the Streams (audiobook) that was a favorite shading puzzle.

December brought two great LITS puzzles, starting with this LITS by JinHoo Ahn with an elegant theme (and quite approachable difficulty).

Our last best shading puzzle of 2020 is this more challenging LITS by wormsofcan that asked solvers to think outside the box.

Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 31 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

The Saturday challenge from our first week of web puzzles was a delightful Fillomino puzzle from guest contributor Elyot Grant.

As we reached the end of June, we posted what was one of the highest rated (and also fairly hard) puzzles of the whole year: a Pentominous by JinHoo Ahn, another guest contributor who surprised us with a lot of great submissions this year.

Puzzlemaster Prasanna Seshadri shared an Araf puzzle with different clusters of small and big numbers and a very elegant logical solving path.

November included a really great Cave puzzle from William Hu, with a beautiful all odd theme and clever logic to be found on the solving path.

And our last post of 2020 also got a good response from our solvers and closes out this Best of set: this Fillomino (Checkered) variation by Jonas Gleim.

Here are our best Loop/Path puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 26 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

A lot of our early puzzles as we were relaunching the website got a good number of FAVE votes. And we seemed to start out strong with this first regular post: an antisymmetric no-numbers Balance Loop by Murat Can Tonta.

Murat had another favorite puzzle with this “Parallel Universes” Slitherlink with an interesting logical path around the grid.

Serkan Yürekli put a little uncertainty into this Slitherlink variation with several missing numbers that must fulfill Sudoku-like constraints. The logical challenge got a lot of favorable comments.

Serkan delighted us again in September with a visually beautiful Snake (Cipher) puzzle that announces itself on the outside of the grid.

Our final best Loop/Path puzzle of 2020 comes from this November post from Tom Collyer, who focused on some less common patterns to give us a really challenging Slitherlink.

Here are our best Loop/Path puzzles of 2019, selected from the 42 web posts in this category based on your FAVE votes:

A couple of our “Best of” in this category are variety puzzles, starting with this loop + word puzzle combination O’utcast from Serkan Yürekli.

Guest contributor Bryce Herdt created a quite unusual Castle Wall puzzle that got a fair number of FAVE votes.

Another guest contributor, Joseph Howard, put together this challenging Yajilin variation with some “false” clues that might be covered up. The solvers who found their way to end enjoyed the journey.

Another Castle Wall, this one by Murat Can Tonta, was our second best in this category, with a noteworthy solving path if you can find it.

The best Loop/Path puzzle of 2019, and also the top vote getter across all categories as the best puzzle of 2019, is an absolutely crazy variation by Yuki Kawabe. It combines some shading, object placement, and snake path genres into a hybrid called SSS (Sundoku Snake Shape).

All of these best Loop/Path puzzles are collected in this PDF file.

Here are our best Shading puzzles of 2019, selected from the 41 web posts in this category based on your FAVE votes:

Our first best shading puzzle of 2019 is actually two puzzles. As part of his debut week at GMPuzzles, Ashish Kumar created a set of puzzles that each had two different solving options from the same clues. With some help from editor (becoming co-author) Thomas Snyder, this Kurotto (and Cave) came together really well and got a lot of favorite votes.

Many of our “best of” puzzles get attention due to unusual clues and fun Aha moments, and the center of this Nanro by John Bulten certainly fits that description.

John Bulten also was the author behind this favorite LITS puzzle with a Pi theme and a fun easter egg for our regular solvers.

Our top two were both Tapa puzzles of different forms by Murat Can Tonta. This Tapa (Regional) puzzle combined some different ways of thinking about clues in a clever and challenging package.

And our Best Shading puzzle of 2019 was this classic Tapa by Murat. While on the easier end (usually our top vote getters are very difficult puzzles), the visual theme and smooth solve stood out for our voters.

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