This past week’s set of Pentominous puzzles are collected in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. If you enjoyed this genre, there are many more Pentominous puzzles in our “Plenty o’ Pentominous” series as well as in the book Intro to GMPuzzles.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and also linked below. I was playing with a few different notation styles (lines, shading, letters, …) through the week on Penpa, and admit this is one of the puzzles where multiple defaults (and even multiple solution checking options) may be best. Please share your comments on how you prefer to solve Pentominous puzzles and if you could make this work in Penpa. We will probably document all of these methods when we formalize the user experience for this style and for Fillomino.

This upcoming week will feature Statue Park puzzles and will also include a large variation as a Sunday Stumper.

Finally, there are still some minor debugging and optimization steps happening with the fave/solve tracker after the most recent update, including trying to lengthen the time the login is stored. Please keep sharing your comments on how this is working and if all of the solving history has come over from the transfer to the site.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: WXY

Author/Opus: This is the 21st puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster JinHoo Ahn.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 3.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:00, Master = 8:30, Expert = 17:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for other Pentominous puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Pentominous to get started on. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in the Plenty o’ Pentominous series by Grant Fikes and Murat Can Tonta and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: PENTOMINO

Author/Opus: This is the 6th puzzle from guest contributor Jonas Gleim.

Rules: Variation of Pentominous rules. Some borders between pentominoes are already drawn.

Difficulty: 3 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:00, Master = 5:30, Expert = 11:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for other Pentominous puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Pentominous to get started on. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in the Plenty o’ Pentominous series by Grant Fikes and Murat Can Tonta and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: No Givens

Author/Opus: This is the 2nd puzzle from guest contributor Elyot Grant.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 3 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:30, Master = 4:45, Expert = 9:30

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for other Pentominous puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Pentominous to get started on. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in the Plenty o’ Pentominous series by Grant Fikes and Murat Can Tonta and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: FaVoriTe

Author/Opus: This is the 62nd puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Ashish Kumar.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 2 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:20, Master = 2:15, Expert = 4:30

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for other Pentominous puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Pentominous to get started on. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in the Plenty o’ Pentominous series by Grant Fikes and Murat Can Tonta and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: TWIX

Author/Opus: This is the 322nd puzzle from our managing editor Serkan Yürekli.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 2 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:15, Master = 2:15, Expert = 4:30

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for other Pentominous puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Pentominous to get started on. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in the Plenty o’ Pentominous series by Grant Fikes and Murat Can Tonta and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: Easy as Pi

Author/Opus: This is the 341st puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Grant Fikes.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 1.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:00, Master = 1:30, Expert = 3:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for other Pentominous puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Pentominous to get started on. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in the Plenty o’ Pentominous series by Grant Fikes and Murat Can Tonta and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

We are excited to announce that The Art of Sudoku 2 is now released in our e-store. This collection of 180 hand-crafted sudoku and variations from sixteen authors was many years in the making, but certainly worth the wait. The entire collection is available for $10 in our e-store, and there are three $4 subsections available: A) = 60 Classic Sudoku; B) = 20 Tight Fit / 20 Consecutive Pairs / 20 Even-Odd Sudoku; C) = 20 Thermo-Sudoku / 20 Arrow Sudoku / 20 Other Variations.

We have been continuing to make some updates to the website. First, on the Penpa side, all of the “classic sudoku” in our archives now have an online solving option. This is the second puzzle, after Kurotto, to be fully digitized, and Star Battle is being worked on now. When we are through with digitizing more styles, we will be reintroducing them here including making some How To videos for using Penpa for these genres.

Also, our solve tracker on each puzzle post has been updated to now be hosted on our site. This update should fix the login problems people have reported over the last six+ months; please tell us if you run into any issues with it, including not seeing your past fave/solve history.

This past week’s set of Sudoku puzzles are collected in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and also linked below.

This upcoming week will feature Pentominous puzzles.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: Plus and Minuses

Author/Opus: This is the 1st puzzle from guest contributor Michael Rios.

Rules: Standard Sudoku rules. Also, each row, column and bold region must contain two negative numbers. The sum of the positive and negative numbers in each cage must equal the value given in the upper-left corner of that cage. Numbers (ignoring sign) cannot repeat inside a cage.

See also this example:

Difficulty: 5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 15:30, Master = 26:00, Expert = 52:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for more Killer Sudoku and this link for classic Sudoku. More Sudoku puzzles can be found in The Art of Sudoku, The Art of Sudoku 2 and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: Gridlocked

Author/Opus: This is the 378th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Sudoku rules.

Difficulty: 4.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 6:30, Master = 15:00, Expert = 30:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video from the author is available here and a video from Cracking the Cryptic here.

Note: Follow this link for other classic Sudoku. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Sudoku to get started on. More classic Sudoku puzzles can be found in The Art of Sudoku, The Art of Sudoku 2 and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.