Archive for the ‘Schedule’ Category:

Season 2 – Free Preview Week

We’re kicking off 2024 with the start of Season 2 of our subscription blog releases. This next week will be a free preview of what a subscription week is like. From Monday to Saturday there are 2 daily puzzles, starting with a warm-up puzzle on the easier end and then a regular puzzle (scaling difficulty through the week). We’ll also have something different for you each Sunday, either a larger or harder puzzle, experiments with new genres, and other things. All puzzles have digital solving options and PDF files, as well as solution animations to help you understand steps where you might get stuck.

The schedule for the free preview week is:
Monday: TomTom
Tuesday: LITS
Wednesday: Numberlink
Thursday: Star Battle (Hidden Double)
Friday: Consecutive Pairs Sudoku
Saturday: Araf
Sunday: Rossini Sudoku

Starting next Monday, we will have 12 more weeks of puzzles for our Season 2 subscribers, running from February through to the end of April. Subscriptions to Season 2 will be $12 (only $4 per month) for over 150 puzzles.

Also, Season 1 is still available for $10 for people who missed our first exciting season. New subscribers to Season 1 will immediately be able to get access to the 175+ puzzles, but without the same active discussion that happened when the puzzles first posted.

Sunday Update

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.

Sunday Update

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.

Sunday Update

Our latest “Smashing the Sudoku” video covering the hard Nurikabe and Tight Fit puzzles from last week is now online.

After some extreme weather that caused power outages and then some other challenges, we’re back on track to get through our January tasks including announcing the Best of 2022 puzzles and releasing some bonus Microsoft Puzzle Hunt content. Keep a watch here for those updates and also for the start of discussing our 2023+ plans for the site in the coming weeks.

Sunday Update and Solutions

Our latest book, Loop Variety Collection 2, is now posted in our e-store.

We’re also putting the finishing touches on Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6 now, and our most recent week on puzzles taken from the styles in that GPQ6 book is gathered in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF.

The puzzle solution videos are on the posts and linked below.

We’re done with posting puzzles for this year, and will be sharing some updates about what is to come in 2023 soon.

Sunday Update and Solutions

Our most recent week Loop Variety puzzle week is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. Our new book Loop Variety Collection 2, with more Geradeweg, Mukkonn Enn, Yajilin (Regional), Equality, and Line of Sight puzzles, will be released in the few days at our e-store. Until then, you can find the first volume which has more Country Road alongside other puzzles here.

The puzzle solution videos, including our first from a guest contributor Martin Ender for the Friday Country Road, are on the posts and linked below.

We will have a Sunday Stumper posting in five minutes. This coming week, our last of new puzzles for 2022, will feature puzzles (and variations) that will be part of the sixth volume of our Grandmaster Puzzle Quarterly series which will also be released this month.

Sunday Update and Solutions: Happy 10th anniversary

Tomorrow marks an important anniversary for Grandmaster Puzzles. On 12/12/12 at 12:12:12 PM (PT) I emailed out my first business plan/organizing documents to the original group of GMPuzzles team members. A few weeks later marked the first blog posts on the site, as well as a new journey in my life as I’d just made a hard decision to leave a science role/project I’d been working on for several years and relocated to Seattle, aiming to rediscover my goals in life starting with Grandmaster Puzzles.

A lot has changed in the time since. For GMPuzzles, this includes a much larger group of contributing puzzlemasters and other authors, Serkan becoming my partner in GMPuzzles as managing editor, regular YouTube solving videos, and digital solving options via Penpa-Edit for all new web posts and some of our books. Professionally and personally, I’ve also gone through a lot from (f)unemployment for a year in 2013 to growing responsibilities as a scientist and team leader, moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area, all while still supporting GMPuzzles through time and money.

Throughout these years though nothing has changed in our mission to bring you “hand-crafted logic puzzles, by the best puzzle designers, for all who love puzzles”. We’ve posted over 2,600 free web puzzles, released over 55 books/collections including several thousand more original puzzles, and never published a “broken” puzzle with an error in the puzzle art, even if I’ve caused a fair share of typos on our posts through the years.

A lot of thoughts come to mind thinking back through this GMPuzzles journey to date, and we’ll be writing more as we hit the end of the year about what are plans are for 2023 and beyond. We expect to make some changes (doing more of some things, less of others) as we update our business plan and explore other new paths to get revenue by supporting other puzzle projects and competitions. For now, let me share my thanks with everyone on the GMPuzzles team, everyone who has ever submitted a puzzle, and you the audience for solving our puzzles and adding your comments to the website. This community of puzzlers has been great to see come together, to support each other including me through some tough times. I’m excited for what comes next.

If you’ve enjoyed our web content, please continue to support the site by sharing gmpuzzles with your friends, by buying some of our books or by making a donation using the button in the menu to the left to give back to our puzzle authors.

Zooming back to the regular content, our most recent week of puzzles to highlight the “Starter Pack” series is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can find all of our Starter Pack books in our e-store, and the 6th volume of “Jigsaw Sudoku” will be released in 2023.

The daily puzzle “talkthrough” videos are on the posts and linked below.

Like this most recent week, our last two weeks of the year will focus on upcoming books starting with the “Loop Variety Collection 2” where we will have some less common loop styles this week including some from the genres in that collection. We’ll also have an unusual Sunday Stumper in one week. Our last week of blog puzzles will then focus on styles from Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6 as we close out ten years of puzzles.

Sunday Update and Solutions

Our most recent week of Nanro puzzles is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can find more Nanro puzzles in our e-store.

The daily puzzle “talkthrough” videos are on the posts and linked below.

Our next week of puzzles looks back at our Starter Pack series, with a new puzzle in each of the styles from the first five books, and then has a Jigsaw Sudoku from me as a teaser for volume 6 that is still being worked on.

Sunday Update and Solutions

Our most recent week of Sudoku puzzles and variations is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can find more Sudoku puzzles in our e-store.

The daily “speed solve + talkthrough” videos are on the posts and linked below.

Our next week of puzzles features Nanro puzzles including three variations.

Sunday Update and Solutions

Our most recent week of Kuromasu and Spiral Galaxies puzzles is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF.

You can find more Spiral Galaxies and Kuromasu puzzles in our e-store.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below. We’re continuing with “speed-solving” and paper notation commentaries this week, so please tell us what you think of this new video approach.

Our next week of puzzles features Sudoku puzzles including two variations.