Thanks to those who’ve written recently to ask how things are going (both personally for me on this “sabbatical year” and with launching a GMPuzzles subscription service). We’re making progress in different ways, even if we’re taking different paths that we thought we would when we first set out goals for 2023 and progress comes in fits and starts.

On the subscription service, we’ve found from testing feedback that a Discord platform may not be the right technical solution to get started (although it is a good addition for puzzle-based communication and ideation). So we have tried to adapt an approach where we can use subscriptions into this WordPress blog to provide subscriber-only content, while expanding the number of puzzles we release in each week to try to offer something for our existing audience and for newer solvers. We are intending to launch this subscription as soon as the start of July if we can pass final integration tests, and will have some more details to share by the end of next week on this front. (Yes, we will go from no puzzles a week to 13+ puzzles a week very fast, but whenever you are able to subscribe you should be able to catch-up on the GMPuzzles you love.)

Today, for Summer Update #1, I wanted to bring attention to another large Grandmaster Puzzles project for this year which is the World Sudoku and Puzzle Championships that we are organizing in Toronto, Canada on October 15-22. We have gathered a great group of authors — most but not all from North America — and are hard at work creating unique individual and team round puzzles for this event, while also setting up different evening activities to make this a lot of fun for anyone who can attend. Our event website just went live earlier this week and we are now starting the registration process.

Alongside this WSPC, I do expect to restart some of my YouTube videos on different aspects of puzzles, including more stories/perspective from my time in puzzles like “What is a (sudoku/puzzle) competition?”, “How to train?”, “How to construct?” instead of just putting out individual solving videos. I will also have some non-puzzle videos on that channel, since part of this year has been watching out for myself and finding what big problems I want to be solving — where I don’t have any answers yet and still sometimes am closer to depression than I want to be, but am getting physically healthier to eventually be mentally healthier to then embark on my next big thing(s).

So with those teasers for upcoming events for me and for GMPuzzles, I want to wish you all a happy start to the summer!

Our Ten-Year Anniversary Contest is now over and we talk through the solution in this “final?” Smashing the Sudoku series video here:

Congrats to the four winners: Stephen W., Mindren L., Giovanni P., and Barbitos.

We’re continuing to work on setting up a two puzzles a day subscription release model for GMPuzzles. We have a first set of testers now identified but if you would be interested in helping out as we get closer to a beta test, please let us know at ads@gmpuzzles.com. In the mean time, we’re pausing our “reposts” from the past for now while we get our 2023 plans set up, at least for April.

Our tenth Smashing the Sudoku video, finishing our original 60+1 puzzle reposting series is now live:

We’re still working on setting up an initial version for a GMPuzzles subscription/release model leveraging Discord. If you are interested in being a tester and committing to adding comments/sharing feedback, please let me us know at ads@gmpuzzles.com. We will likely have an email option to share the content to subscribers as well, but right now we are looking for testers to tell us if a Discord integration (as an early version of a more fully fledged platform) is worth committing more time to.

We’ll be posting Sudoku from our 2022 Sudoku Grand Prix Round over the next couple weeks.

Our ninth Smashing the Sudoku video including Slitherlink and Deficit/Surplus Sudoku walkthroughs and an update on the Ten-Year Anniversary Contest is now posted:

This coming week will be the last in our look back series on our first 60+1 puzzles and we will then share more details on what is coming up in 2023 for GMPuzzles.

Our eighth Smashing the Sudoku video for “Fleet Week” is now live:

We have two more weeks in this look back series and then we will be putting our attention to a new subscription model for daily puzzles starting in April. While we have a long-term goal of having a full digital platform to deliver puzzles, we will get started by using Discord to support a Penpa + PDF delivery of two puzzles per day. Discord should also allow for a more dynamic conversation ability between our constructors and our audience while we gather feedback on features for the future.

Look to this Sunday update space for more details on our Discord invites and on how to get an early subscription before our April launch.

Our seventh Smashing the Sudoku video (which also announces the prizes for our Ten-Year Anniversary Contest) is now live:

This coming week will be “fleet week” of sorts, with Battleships and Battleship Sudoku alternating every other day.

We’re excited to announce that Grandmaster Puzzles will be organizing the puzzles for the next World Sudoku and Puzzle Championships. This news is now confirmed yesterday following a successful vote of the general assembly of the World Puzzle Federation. The next WSPC event will be held October 15-22 in Toronto, Canada. Thomas Snyder and Serkan Yürekli will be coordinating the puzzles, with a much larger team from Canada and the US working together on all the other details.

Organizing the world championships will be a big project for us in 2023, and we are considering how “competitions” and “rankings” can be a larger theme for our new content on the website and YouTube this year. Please keep on the watch for more news and updates, and do reach out to us if you are interested in contributing to the WSPC (particularly North American authors).

In addition to this exciting news, we have our posted our sixth episode in our Smashing the Sudoku series, looking back at our launch puzzle set from 2013:

I’ve been doing some traveling so am a bit late in announcing the release of our fifth episode of Smashing the Sudoku, as we look back at the good (and evil?) sides of puzzle styles like Consecutive Sudoku and Masyu.

We’ve also now completed adding hints and solutions to the four Microsoft Puzzlehunt puzzles we’ve put here over recent Sundays. If you haven’t checked out these puzzles yet please find them alongside a few other “puzzle hunt” puzzles on our blog.

Several members of the GMPuzzles family are from Turkey, and our thoughts go out to them and to others from Turkey and Syria who may have been affected or may know those affected by the recent earthquakes on the Turkish/Syrian border.

GMPuzzles will be donating all proceeds from book sales for the next ten days to relief efforts like those of the Turkish Red Crescent; we will also match any donations that come in via PayPal over the same period (see Tip Jar in left menu). As an advance against those amounts, we’ve given $1,000 to https://ahbap.org/disasters-turkey.

Update 12 Feb 2023: Serkan has constructed a puzzle to help raise awareness and funding for those impacted by the earthquake. We’ve put together this simplified PDF to be able to play along with the puzzle.

The puzzle was also featured on Cracking the Cryptic:

with this link to play the puzzle online.

We’ve just published our fourth episode of Smashing the Sudoku as we look back at our first puzzles from ten years ago and try to bring back memories of these constructions from our first 60+1 puzzles:

In a few minutes we will also have our fourth Microsoft Puzzle Hunt bonus puzzle, which we hope you all enjoy.