A reminder that our reopening sale runs to the end of June (Tuesday) with a 20% discount on all titles in the shop (automatically applied at checkout) so please check out the e-book store if you want to purchase some puzzle PDFs.

Our most recent week of Pentominous puzzles can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have two solving videos for Pentominous puzzles from this week, for the Wednesday and Saturday puzzles.

Later today we will be back with our third “Best of 2019” post highlighting Region Division puzzles, and for the rest of the week we will be posting a variety mix of puzzles ranging from easy to hard in difficulty as the week progresses.

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: Three Types

Author/Opus: This is the 4th puzzle from guest contributor JinHoo Ahn.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 4 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:00, Master = 7:30, Expert = 15:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here from GMPuzzles and a second one here from Cracking the Cryptic.

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: Dynamite Walls

Author/Opus: This is the 320th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Grant Fikes.

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

Difficulty: 3.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:30, Master = 5:45, Expert = 11:30

Solution: PDF

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: Heart-Shaped Box

Author/Opus: This is the 165th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Murat Can Tonta.

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

Difficulty: 3 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:00, Master = 4:30, Expert = 9:00

Solution: PDF

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: Out of the Box

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

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 2.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:45, Master = 4:00, Expert = 8:00

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: Couples

Author/Opus: This is the 44th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Ashish Kumar.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 2.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:15, Master = 3:45, Expert = 7:30

Solution: PDF

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: Pairs

Author/Opus: This is the 43rd puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Tom Collyer.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Difficulty: 1.5 stars

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

Solution: PDF

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.

[Update: As of 2021, we are now routinely using penpa-edit and more info is here.]

While I am mainly a pencil-and-paper puzzle solver, I always thought GMPuzzles would eventually find some digital outlets. Not necessarily one outlet — our different styles have different needs and a good app for Sudoku/TomTom is probably quite different from a good app for Tapa/Nurikabe — but at least some outlets where we would be content providers. While I will soon have some of my TomTom puzzles as part of one app-based release, this is the exception and not the rule after 7.5 years.

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Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2019, selected from the 38 web posts in this category based on your FAVE votes:

Our first favorite puzzle was a bonus for our subscribers, a Star Battle from Murat Can Tonta with four interacting T’s framing the grid. (We are beginning to organize all of our web bonus puzzles into a new book so that those who missed these puzzles from 2014-2019 can see what they missed.)

Our next favorite puzzle came from Ashish Kumar, the most recent puzzlemaster to join the team. It combined Minesweeper and Battleship logic and required some outside of the box thinking.

For some reason I don’t fully understand, pi-themed puzzles are always popular on the site. Serkan Yürekli brought out a Digital Battleships puzzle that used the first 100 digits of pi and a nice series of outside clues to limit the grid.

Our top two puzzles both used the theme of “two” in different creative ways. Guest contributor Bryce Herdt made this challenging Pentopia puzzle with only two-way straight arrows as clues.

Leading to our best object placement puzzle of 2019, this quite unusual and very logically interesting Battleships puzzle by John Bulten.

All of these best Object Placement puzzles are collected in this PDF file.

A reminder that throughout June, as part of our reopening, we have a special 20% discount on all titles in the shop (automatically applied at checkout) so please check out the store if you want to purchase some puzzle PDFs.

Our most recent week of Star Battle puzzles can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have three video solution talkthroughs for this week. As I was the constructor for the Saturday puzzle, you can find my exact intended path in this video:

and you can also find my approaches to solving the Wednesday and Friday puzzles in these videos

Over this weekend, we have also completed the first part of a long-term project to add solutions to our web backlog. All puzzles from 2018 and 2019 now have posted PDFs of the solutions, and you can also grab their solutions from our weekly PDFs page.

Later today we will be back with our second “Best of 2019” post highlighting Object Placement puzzles, and also a post discussing thoughts on online solving tools for GMPuzzles. And this upcoming week we will focus on Pentominous puzzles.