Here are our best Number Placement puzzles of 2019, selected from the 35 web posts in this category based on your FAVE votes:

We had a “pair” of Kakuro puzzles that were both on the higher end of the list for 2019 (admittedly the “pair” was more of an editorial connection given similar grid shapes but different solving paths; both were great puzzles and posted on back-to-back days). The second of the pair was this Nonconsecutive Kakuro from Grant Fikes that was a Sunday bonus for our subscribers. (Note: 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.)

In terms of variety Number Placement styles, this Smashed Sums by Michael Tang with a Binary theme got top marks. It is a great example of our “Grandmaster Puzzles” style: a compelling visual theme that also leads to a satisfying logical solve.

We really enjoy TomTom puzzles and two TomToms from our contributing puzzlemasters stood out this year. Both highlighted reusing a small number of clue values to create an interesting solving path. Ashish Kumar brought us this “Three Thirty” TomTom where if you can solve the puzzle that fast you’d be breaking our grandmaster time.

Murat Can Tonta brought us this “Jackpot” TomTom with all sevens to sort out, and a lot of top votes to make it our second favorite in this category.

Overall, our best Number Placement puzzle of 2019 was this Kakuro also from Murat Can Tonta, with a similar pattern to the first puzzle on this list and a challenging but fun solving path.

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

Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2019, selected from the 45 web posts in this category based on your FAVE votes:

We had two favorite Pentominous (Borders) puzzles. The first, from Murat Can Tonta, was an amazingly beautiful 12-clue puzzle with each pentomino letter appearing in “Alphabetical Order” in the grid. That this solves uniquely as a Pentominous puzzle is a true grandmaster’s touch.

The other Pentominous (Borders) that was a best of 2019 was from Grant Fikes, and had a more involved logical solve that went around the grid.

Guest contributor Michael Tang brought our favorite Cave puzzle of 2019 with another fun logical solving theme to discover.

We had a few surprises in store last year, including a hidden January connection to the 2019 MIT Mystery Hunt when some Fillomino (Cipher) puzzles by Tim Marsden (anagrams to Mastermind) were posted in January. These puzzles were actually by Dan Katz, and linked as a final step in another puzzle, Connect Four, from that Hunt. This hardest Cipher puzzle, with full top and bottom rows, was a favorite of 2019.

Overall, our best region division puzzle of 2019 went to John Bulten’s Fillomino with some trademark Bulten-Aha moments to go from a seemingly impossible puzzle to something with a logical path.

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

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.

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.

Here are our best Sudoku puzzles of 2018, selected from the 42 web posts in this category:

Visually distinctive puzzles were an important part of the top Sudoku from 2018. While posted in our last week of 2018, this Christmas Tree Sudoku by Thomas Snyder (that combines Sudoku with the popular Star Battle style) got a lot of FAVE votes in a rather short time.

While we have been avoiding “Pi” puzzles for a long time here — some of us assert there is a more fundamental mathematical constant around 6.283 — having some new editors involved on the web led to our first full week of “Pi” puzzles in March and some others later in the year. Two Pi sudoku stood out including this Consecutive Sudoku from guest contributor Fatih Kamer Anda.

Another prize goes out to an Arrow Sudoku from Murat Can Tonta.

The best sudoku of 2018 goes to another Pi-themed puzzle, a Thermo-Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli with an incredibly elegant arrangement of its givens that still leads to a fundamentally interesting logical solve.

Here are our best Number Placement puzzles of 2018, selected from the 50 web posts in this category:

We haven’t had many puzzles from Palmer Mebane recently (in part it seems he mostly constructs for World Puzzle Championship preparation), but this WPC prep puzzle — Skyscrapers (with Sum Baskets) — has a very elegant logical solving path that our solvers appreciated.

Regular contributor and grandmaster Grant Fikes shared this Kakuro (Gapped) puzzle that also earned a good number of FAVE votes.

Murat Can Tonta won another best of award for this Thermo-Skyscrapers combination which, like some prior examples, avoided needing to give any given numbers to get its logical solution going. The presence of only three short thermos outside the grid was a cute new twist on this style.

Our runaway winner in the category though, and the runner-up for Best Puzzle of 2018, was this TomTom (Mystery) written by Thomas Snyder as his 300th post here on the site. [Breaking third-person self reference:] While I haven’t had the chance to write as many puzzles this year, focusing more on editing, it was great to receive recognition from so many of you for this milestone puzzle.

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Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2018, selected from the 48 web posts in this category. This category features our puzzle of the year, and 3 of the top 7 puzzles overall! This shows us you all really like Star Battle, so we will be sure to include this in our set of new e-books for 2019:

Our first Best of Object Placement puzzle is this Statue Park from guest contributor Joseph Howard which has some very interesting logic to its solve connected to its theme of symmetric corners.

Serkan Yürekli won another award with this Connected Regions Star Battle, taken from his excellent Intro to GMPuzzles title which is a great way for beginners to learn about our styles.

Murat Can Tonta tied Serkan’s Star Battle with this “classic” Star Battle of his own design with a larger grid and more stars to place per region.

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The Best of Object Placement, and the Best Puzzle of 2018, went to another creative new challenge from Murat Can Tonta that allowed solvers to build their own Star Battle and then solve it. Can you JOIN ME in finding the unique answer to this extra special puzzle?

Here are our best Shading puzzles of 2018, selected from the 59 web posts in this category (our most common category, just barely). We had a lot of great Shading puzzles throughout the year and here the best choices were more closely grouped together:

2018 marked the start of Serkan Yürekli doing a lot more work editing and helping the site in other ways. One of these additions was bringing in a lot more puzzle authors including some of our youngest contributors to date. Guest contributor Yunus Emre Büyükkale received a best of prize for this 1ST-themed LITS on the site.

Serkan also continued sharing great puzzles including his original creation Tapa. This particular Two-focused Tapa puzzle that closed out a week with a lot of two-clue Tapa puzzles was one of our best shading puzzles of 2018.

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This Outside Nanro by Carl Worth was a really fresh variation with a good solving path and earned recognition as well.

However, our best shading puzzle comes from Prasanna Seshadri with another take on the idea of Tapa and Two. Only in this “Twopa” it is that the given grid can lead to two specific answers if none of the clues have repeated shading around them.

Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2018, selected from the 56 web posts in this category (you’ll noticee that with our new publication schedule, the categories were more balanced in representation in 2018):

Looking across each month of posts, we find that the last couple months of the year always receive fewer votes. This isn’t that hard to understand when you consider we posted 311 puzzles in the year so some solvers will fall behind / catch up at different rates with our publishing scheduling. We take this into account by looking at relative FAVE rates towards the end of the year to identify any outliers. A few puzzles then stand out including this Spiral Galaxies with a hidden message from Grant Fikes that we posted a couple weeks ago.

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Two Cave puzzles received top marks this year, starting with this variation Formed Cave including pentominoes by Serkan Yürekli.

The other top Cave puzzle in this category comes from Murat Can Tonta where a logical theme might lead to a fun surprise at the end?

Our top puzzle in this category, and the 4th best of 2018 across the whole site by number of votes, comes from our “grandmaster” John Bulten who pursued another grandmaster-type theme with Chess. John probably has a few different hallmarks to his design style; one is to take a creative new theme idea and execute it to perfection. This Fillomino (Cipher) “A Novelty Against the French Defense” is a great addition to his overall body of work, which you can further explore on the web here and in collections like The Art of Puzzles 2 (just watch out for another hallmark which is high difficulty/Aha nature of the solves)

Here are our best Loop/Path puzzles of 2018, selected from the 54 web posts in this category:

While we post bonus puzzles each week, only our subscribers get to solve them so it is very rare — even though these can be really great puzzles — for them to win enough votes for consideration for the Best of prizes. The challenging Roller Coaster by guest contributor Joseph Howard is the one bonus puzzle to win a Best of award for 2018.

This regional Yajilin by Murat Can Tonta got a lot praise from our solvers with an easy start that draws you into the variation style but a challenging conclusion.

Another gem from Murat Can Tonta came in the form of “Circuitous”, a large Slitherlink puzzle with no zero clues and a fun solving theme.

But winning the category was the puzzle that posted the next day and was called an “Early candidate for puzzle of the year” by one of the commenters. This Slitherlink grid variant from Serkan Yürekli ultimately got the third most votes for all of our puzzles across genres. It is an incredibly original idea for a loop puzzle that has many of the properties of our best puzzles: visually engaging, to make you want to solve it, and then a complex and interesting logical path that rewards the time spent when you reach the solution.

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