Last week’s puzzles are grouped together in this PDF.
As we roll into December we expect to have a few treats for you here at Grandmaster Puzzles. These are the puzzles this week (highlight to view), with more gifts to come:
Monday – Fillomino by Grant Fikes
Tuesday – Nurikabe by Tom Collyer
Wednesday – Skyscraper (Sums) by Thomas Snyder
Thursday – Tapa-like Loop by Serkan Yürekli
Friday – Star Battle by Thomas Snyder
Saturday – Sudoku +/- 4 by Palmer Mebane
Last week’s puzzles are grouped together in this PDF.
This week will have a few more “regular” puzzles than the rest of November, but still some of the variety that we hope you have become thankful for over this year. And for the first time in a few weeks we will have all of our contributing puzzlemasters providing puzzles (to whom I am especially thankful for helping to grow GMPuzzles into an even more incredible site). Highlight to view the schedule:
Monday – Cross the Streams by Grant Fikes
Tuesday – Masyu by Tom Collyer
Wednesday – Sudoku by Thomas Snyder
Thursday – Battleships by Thomas Snyder
Friday – Easy as Japanese Sums by Serkan Yürekli
Saturday – Hexa Briquets by Palmer Mebane
Last week’s puzzles are grouped together in this PDF.
This week will have a few surprises and a few less familiar puzzle types. Here are the puzzles you can expect from Monday to Saturday this week (highlight to view):
Monday – Cave by Grant Fikes
Tuesday – Letter Pairs by Palmer Mebane
Wednesday – Sudoku by Thomas Snyder
Thursday – Trid by Serkan Yürekli
Friday – Pentomino Puddles by Serkan Yürekli
Saturday – Neighbors by Palmer Mebane
Last week’s puzzles are grouped together in this PDF.
We’ve been having some harder puzzles recently, particularly as the number of new types (including WPC practice puzzles) has been high. This week will probably be no different and has certainly tested as having harder than usual puzzles on many of the days. Here are the puzzles you can expect from Monday to Saturday this week (highlight to view):
Monday – LITS by Grant Fikes
Tuesday – Sudoku by Thomas Snyder
Wednesday – Pentomino Coral Variation by Palmer Mebane
Thursday – Tren by Serkan Yürekli
Friday – Graffiti (Loop) by Serkan Yürekli
Saturday – Pentomino Coral Variation by Palmer Mebane
Last week’s puzzles are grouped together in this PDF.
Here are the puzzles you can expect from Monday to Saturday this week (highlight to view):
Monday – Sudoku by Thomas Snyder
Tuesday – Loop Variation by Serkan Yürekli
Wednesday – Fillomino Variation (Pentominous) by Grant Fikes
Thursday – Statue Park by Palmer Mebane
Friday – TomTom by Tom Collyer
Saturday – Nurikabe + Word Variation by Palmer Mebane
Congratulations to our contributing puzzlemaster Palmer Mebane for his dominant performance throughout the general competition at the recent World Puzzle Championship. Over the coming weeks we will post several of the puzzles Palmer wrote before the WPC as practice here, which should show you the dedication a puzzle champion must have to his craft.
As we get back into a regular schedule, you can find the set of puzzles we posted over the last two weeks gathered in this PDF. Here are the puzzles you can expect from Monday to Saturday this week (highlight to view):
Monday – Yajilin by Grant Fikes
Tuesday – Fillomino by Grant Fikes
Wednesday – Sudoku Variation by Thomas Snyder
Thursday – Star Battle by Thomas Snyder
Friday – Cross the Streams by Grant Fikes
Saturday – Smashed Sums Variation by Palmer Mebane
Now that the WPC is over, our focus is back on finishing our large book project “The Art of Puzzles”. This has taken awhile to put together as it has grown to be an over 250 puzzle title, with at least 25 puzzles in 10 different styles (Tapa, Nurikabe, Masyu, Slitherlink, TomTom, Skyscrapers, Fillomino, Cave, Star Battle, and Battleships). We have almost two dozen authors represented from around the world, including all of our contributing puzzlemasters to varying degrees. Grant Fikes deserves particular credit for the high quantity and quality of the puzzles he has provided (about 20%, basically tied with Dr. Sudoku) including many very large grids. One special treat is that the Tapa section was written entirely by Serkan Yürekli, the originator of the style and a true Tapa Master. You’ll definitely appreciate some of the surprises he packed into his puzzles. Some of the last tasks to do on the book now are to gather and write a really good set of hint/tutorial sections for the puzzles which may go into the book or may just end up online as an extra supplement. We are also looking through different printing and binding options and expect to offer both print and electronic forms of the book on release. Look for more announcements on “The Art of Puzzles” here soon.
Due to the World Sudoku and Puzzle Championships running now, we will have a “half” schedule of puzzles over the next two weeks as follows:
10/14 – Star Battle by Palmer Mebane
10/16 – Fillomino by Grant Fikes
10/18 – Sudoku Variation by Serkan Yürekli
10/22 – Masyu by Thomas Snyder
10/24 – TomTom Variation by Serkan Yürekli
10/26 – Tapa by Palmer Mebane
As some of you have suggested that a schedule of upcoming puzzles will be nice, I will try to give a weekly post with these plans going forward. I’ll also post a weekly PDF file after each week has concluded. Here is a PDF for week 41.
For those wondering about The Art of Puzzles and other projects, I’ll have more news on them in the next Doctor’s Note.
Best of luck and skill to all the competitors at the WSC and WPC.
–Dr. S
Here are the final puzzles from the US Sudoku Qualifying Test that I wrote. Both are less common types. Tomorrow will finally bring some new puzzles, and I hope some surprises too.
The first of this set, a “Seek-and-Spell” variant, is a style that took on a life of its own on this website a few months ago as more and more constructors kept submitting it. I wanted a very United States sort of puzzle somewhere on this test and found a good letter set to get 5 states into this grid. I wanted OHIO from the start as an easy Seek-and-Spell rule placement. But the value of states like MONTANA and INDIANA became clear during construction. This may have been the only case on the test where some non-sudoku logic puzzling skill would really accelerate the solve as the Seek-and-Spell placements are quite limited and getting them fixed makes the rest much easier.
The second of this set is a style I first created for a Czech/US Sudoku Championship several years ago and one that I keep bringing out every year typically for championship season. It is one of the easier styles construction-wise to get started with creative themes as it does not take a lot of digits in either grid before the linked cells really start to force the solve. But occasionally getting both grids to behave by the end can be hard. Here, my seeds were two different styles of basic step in the two grids. And after finding the linked regions, consistently ping-ponging between the two puzzles to get to the end. It is another of my favorites on this test.
Not posted this week were the great submissions from Wei-Hwa Huang. This year I gave him a sketch of the styles I wanted and he delivered in a large way. For example, I had a basic concept to play with Binary in a 6×6 grid with missing digits much like the Indian GP test had a play on this with Braille. Wei-Hwa took it farther than I did though with 0-7 and three bits being a perfect choice and his example and test puzzle were both quite fun. The Property Sudoku also had quite an elegant solve and his Diagonal had a good, but fair, challenge.
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: United States
Rules: Standard Sudoku rules except that instead of the numbers 1-9 this puzzle uses the letters ADEHIMNOT. Also, clues in the grid represent typical “Seek and Spell/Kanaore” clues; specifically, it must be possible to read each of the words/phrases listed below the grid by starting at the indicated number, moving one cell in the direction indicated by the arrow, and then continuing to move one cell at a time up, down, left, or right to complete the word/phrase. No cell may be used more than once in a single path, but the same cell can appear in the paths of different words/phrases.
Answer String: For the USSQT, the answer strings were a set of rows/columns encountered late in the puzzle. For this week, you can just hit the solved button on an honor system if you think you’ve solved it.
Solution: PDF
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: Logical
Rules: Standard Sudoku rules for each of the two grids. There are three shaded regions in each grid. The shaded regions must exactly match between the puzzles, but which shaded regions correspond to which must be discovered.
Answer String: For the USSQT, the answer strings were a set of rows/columns encountered late in the puzzle. For this week, you can just hit the solved button on an honor system if you think you’ve solved it.
Solution: PDF
This puzzle was inspired by a comment I read somewhere of someone stumbling on a Thermo-Sudoku by solving it for awhile as an Arrow (or vice-versa, I can’t remember exactly). The goal was simple: can I make one puzzle that solves both ways depending on the type of shape placed into the grid. The theme here speaks mostly for itself.
But if you want an extra challenge I’d recommend solving from these images (Arrow / Thermo) or PDFs (Arrow / Thermo) which contain the original draft of the finished puzzle. The arrow is probably a much better challenge as a result, but the Thermo is at the very high end of the difficulty scale and better for a slow solve than a competition solve. Fortunately there were a good set of symmetric positions that still matched with digits so I could add clues to both puzzles without spoiling the theme. Of course, almost all the remaining digits differ but I guess that is the point.
Some people have asked about the construction steps to get two working puzzles of very different types. I normally design both of these styles by hand starting from an image of the shapes and then slowly adding digits. Here I simply did this at the same time for two different styles. The intention of having the centers work quite differently in the two types made the first four givens in the center the start. The 1’s in the corners were also great clue digits for both Arrow and Thermo types for different reasons. As I got some other good logical placements worked out, I did use some software tools to confirm each puzzle still had possible solutions before going too far down a dead-end. Gradually a duplicated puzzle came into form.
Enjoy what were probably my favorite puzzles from the USSQT.
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: Deja vu
Rules: Standard Arrow Sudoku rules.
Answer String: For the USSQT, the answer strings were a set of rows/columns encountered late in the puzzle. For this week, you can just hit the solved button on an honor system if you think you’ve solved it.
Solution: PDF
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: Deja vu
Rules: Standard Thermo-Sudoku rules.
Answer String: For the USSQT, the answer strings were a set of rows/columns encountered late in the puzzle. For this week, you can just hit the solved button on an honor system if you think you’ve solved it.
Solution: PDF
