In this short episode of Today in Sudoku, Thomas shares the latest news from SudokuCon as well as potentially alarming news at GMPuzzles as we almost had another system crash with Dr. Sudoku, our AI-powered puzzle engine. Who is behind this “near miss” and why? We also give the latest updates on our “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku” series.

Join us every day around 8:45 AM PT to learn about yesterday’s puzzles on the site, other sudoku news, and get a teaser for the new puzzle.

In this episode of Today in Sudoku, Thomas discusses how AI is affecting his view of many things including blog discussion and puzzle generation which motivated an unusual project to have a daily sudoku experience with a “serial” story character to it.

See all “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku” posts by clicking that link.

Join us every day around 8:45 AM PT to learn about yesterday’s puzzles on the site, other sudoku news, and get a teaser for the new puzzle.

In this subseries of Today in Sudoku, world champion Thomas Snyder speed solves the NYTimes Sudoku for the prior day as well as one of his prior puzzles scrambled so he might not recognize it. Watch him struggle or succeed at these Sudoku while using a new hybrid digital notation you might not recognize called Snyder Notation(TM).

Join us every day around 8:45 AM PT to learn about yesterday’s puzzles on the site, other sudoku news, and get a teaser for the new puzzle.

This video will talk about our early history with GAS team, where we reached 50 published posts on Saturday, a great milestone for us. On the 51st puzzle (shown) something much different happened when I decided to start solving. What is it, and how do I express / unlock creativity at different times?

Join us every day around 8:45 AM PT to learn about yesterday’s puzzles on the site, other sudoku news, and get a teaser for the new puzzle.

To hate a thing, you have to love a thing. To hate a thing, you have to love a thing. That sounds like yesterday’s theme. This video is not about repetitive computer-generated slop, but it is about repetition. Rather accidental or purposeful, there is sometimes replication of puzzles when authoring or editing. Listen to a fun story that makes us ask how certain things happen and then even forces to ask, when we are choosing a grid like a 17-given one that must be repetition if there is still a way to represent it that is something new and not just déjà vu.

We’ll also reveal the first 2 minutes of the most important Snyder Sudoku Method of construction that we don’t think anyone has done.

Join us again tomorrow around 8:45 AM PT every day to learn about yesterday’s puzzles on the site, other sudoku news, and get a teaser for the new puzzle.

To hate a thing, you have to love a thing. Keep this in mind as you watch this raw video that may venture into delicate spaces but gets at what is important not just about puzzles, but about puzzle publishing, and there is a lot of scar tissue from long before the AI-hype cycle. Based on actions during the video, we suspect at least 98.4375% of slop may eventually be harmed by this video.

Join us again tomorrow around 8:45 AM PT every day to learn about yesterday’s puzzles on the site, other sudoku news, and get a teaser for the new puzzle.

Welcome to the second episode of Today in Sudoku, where we’ll talk about challenges in notation and (BREAKING NEWS!) reveal a new kind of Snyder Notation for outside the box thinking.

Join us again tomorrow around 8:45 AM PT to learn about yesterday’s puzzle more, get other sudoku news, and get a teaser for the new puzzle.

We’re premiering a new Daily YouTube video series (Today in Sudoku) to help explain our Sudoku content, highlight other projects and news, and we’re going to release it daily around 8:45 AM so it can include a teaser for the upcoming puzzle and be a place we gather before solving that. Today it is ok if no one is here and watching on time. We are starting to do things, and find the roles we need to hire, so we can have “The Most Important Sudoku” every day at one place at one time, which is what a daily puzzle needs to have to be most valuable as a daily puzzle. The audience will be here eventually. We already have the best Genuinely Approachable (Variant) Sudoku and we are moving towards the same for Classics.

This does not replace “This Month in Sudoku” which is for longer themes and when we let Thomas have unscripted sections to say more big picture summaries and connect dots where people haven’t seen things. We are still planning the exact date for the second episode of that.

We wanted to share a “the story so far” kind of update for “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku” since a lot of people have not been following very deeply. Importantly, if you just like solving really elegant Sudoku puzzles, please just solve the Sudoku. You can ignore the author, title, and flavor text; the provided difficulties suggest what you’ll be getting on any post. However, the posts do link together so…

For the light summary (web view only):
In the first week, Thomas shared a set of 4 (of 5) puzzles on a box-like grid, titled “Intelligence is Thinking * The Box” which each had very different solving structures. The flavor text suggested some may have been hand-set but by the end he was possibly enjoying time at the beach and a computer was doing most of the work. While getting to full self-setting AI was problematic, adding in new training sources besides just Classic Sudoku got some more curious puzzles and better AI. Finally, on Monday, the “Dr. Sudoku” system launched on its own, exceeding the typical 9×9 space of a sudoku puzzle.

We’ve been told that each week (roughly) there will be a new theme for the Sudoku, and this is now the second day for an apparent “self-driving” theme. The puzzles seem easier so far — at least today’s only needs 1-6 placed — but who knows what is down the road.

For the heavy summary (web and discord rabbithole):
Besides the story above, the president of GMPuzzles, mars, has been using their own HAL 12000 AI system to analyze and solve the puzzles. They have been finding occasional traces of puzzle hunt-like signals in the sudoku, and with the help of Tane, HAL was able to hack into the Dr. Sudoku system but has since gone quiet.

We await further word, but this might be a battle of intelligence against intelligence. We’ll need help eventually. There is a spoiler-free place in the Discord just for the HAL 12000 messages and a cooperative discussion space. But first you may have to join.

We have a few site updates for the start of July, which marks the start of our second full month in the Twelve Months of Sudoku!?! project. A playful YouTube recap of the first month of sudoku is in this video that shares the goal to see “how far we can push the limits of sudoku”:

The big news in June was starting to publish the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) puzzle here, a series we love as a great daily game and expect you already love or will come to love in the same way. Having met our soft-launch goals, in July we are making this next update: The daily GAS will be available each day here at 12 AM PT for everyone in the world to build into their routine however they choose. This is the same time as some of our other daily games that we make for LinkedIn and my own daily routine will be to spend a little time double-checking the Queens, Zip, and Tango before solving ~1 GAS puzzle to track my thinking that morning and try to come up with one new idea, even if I just leave it on paper that day.

We don’t yet have our own book/app project with the GAS team; if you want to support clover! (Patreon), Philip Newman (Patreon), and Bill Murphy (Patreon) individually you can go to the pages linked here. One thing you can get by becoming a patron is some of the more GMPuzzles-like difficulties harder than GAS, still with impressive grid construction as you’ll have seen from the regular GAS.

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The other news for July is the start of my “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku“. For a few months I’ve had an idea for a new way to share puzzles that might change the experience a bit. Some may remember the challenging mix of themes in the “Twelve Days of Sudoku” / “Ready Layer One” era (perhaps month 0 of this project?), which had a mix of puzzle types and modes and essays and conversations on mental health and a lot more. I was first pushing that creativity while in a productive, creative state and then later while in a severe hypomanic state, and without the usual team support to keep on target.

This new project aims to reach the interesting and enjoyable potential of that winter project, with more controlled construction and puzzle release. It will still be experimental, and may give off puzzle hunt or ARG vibes alongside other things, but it’s “Layer One” is just a daily puzzle with a little flavor here on the blog and is only much more if you choose to visit our Discord and watch and/or participate with the items that pop up there.

There are three things “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku” is about. First, it is a story. Each puzzle fits into some of the preceding or following puzzles, with a few sentences of text connecting some dots (no more than can fit on a puzzle PDF page). The series is launching with a theme of self-setting (while some AI may be harmed in the making of this series, it is up to you to determine if any were ever used); this may change the conversation from “How did (you/the constructor) make that?” to “Why did (you/the editor) find that important?” and other things too. It will have a daily Sudoku puzzle with difficulty and solving times behind spoiler tags. If you just want a daily Sudoku-like thing more Classic than the GAS, for now this series is my answer. Later in the year, there are other projects brewing that are not “art projects” and are meant for the mass-market that we will point you to instead if the GAS or “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku” are not what you are looking for. There are possibly Easter eggs, and Discord-specific elements (a lot of the extra story/interaction has to happen on Discord).

As always, there are lots of ways to reach me / our team, from blog comments to Discord messages to email or mail. For a little while, I am not going to be posting messages here or on Discord (except automated puzzle posts) and will leave it to mars and their AI solver to try to understand what “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku” is really about. Feel free to read that story, or try to outsmart the AI solver if you can. I’ve left some messages sealed in envelopes for when certain events happen which will be reported here or on the Discord. Enjoy the rest of July!