Here are our best Number Placement puzzles of 2016 (excluding Sudoku which is treated as its own category). We posted 28 Number Placement puzzles on the web throughout the year.

2016 saw the official addition of Kakuro to our puzzle makeup with a lot of good puzzles. This Kakuro (Double) puzzle from Grant Fikes with a Cloverleaf pattern earned a fair number of votes.

Dr. Sudoku added a Sudoku-like unique digit theme to this Hundred puzzle, a style originally created by Vladimir Portugalov. While the style has simple instructions, the intended logical path in this puzzle requires a deduction we haven’t seen in a Hundred puzzle before.

A lot of our best of puzzles this year were part of our patrons weeks, where our authors made requested puzzles from our super grandmaster patrons. This Multi-Skyscrapers variation by Serkan Yürekli tied for the most votes in the category.

Our best Number Placement Puzzle of 2016 was another Kakuro (Double) puzzle from Serkan Yürekli which we posted near Valentine’s Day. More Double Kakuro (and other doubled puzzles) will be in the Art of Puzzles 2, including several more gems from Serkan.

(view directly for a larger image)

Today we’ll look back at our best puzzles of 2016, using data from the FAVE button at the bottom of each post. The selection process included raw FAVE counts, FAVE/solver ratios, and internal discussions if those values brought up ties.

We posted 227 total web puzzles in 2016 and have now crossed >1,000 puzzles online with nearly another thousand in our e-books. I am incredibly proud that we have never released a broken puzzle (i.e., a puzzle with zero solutions/too many solutions). We also restarted our Patreon rewards and got our e-store organized to have an easier path to release puzzles to solvers. While we didn’t release all the titles we wanted to in 2016, particularly the long-delayed The Art of Puzzles 2, the infrastructure we built up last year should help us reach our target of a dozen new e-book collections in 2017. A priority for us this year is a new Sudoku magazine that, like our puzzle titles, will bring together the incredible puzzles from the best puzzle designers for all who love puzzles.

We released 31 sudoku puzzles on the website last year. One of our best sudoku is this “sleepy” Thermo-Sudoku from Prasanna Seshadri with a clever logical path.

Another highly rated puzzle was this Killer Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli with a Last Ones theme in the cage clues.

The last two “best of” puzzles came out of a challenge Serkan had with Thomas to try to make a Tight Fit Sudoku that would take at least five minutes to solve. This is a challenging feat given the compact nature of a Tight Fit Sudoku. When Serkan couldn’t do this with classic Tight Fit puzzles he went on to make variations of Tight Fit Sudoku in a quite enjoyable week of puzzles. Dr. Sudoku’s own attempt at a five-minute puzzle, with just odd given digits, required a unique Aha to get to the solution logically — but it still only took three and a half minutes for our best solvers. It was a Patron bonus for that week and earned one of the highest FAVE/solver ratios for the year. [Note: this is one of two patron bonuses to win a Best Of award this year, but they’ll stay blurred on this site.]

Coming back to Serkan’s week of Tight Fit puzzles, the clear winner for Best Sudoku of 2016 was the Tight Fit Sudoku (Samurai) that closed out the Tight Fit Variations week. While quite difficult, it has a lot of novel logical steps and is a true standout puzzle.

(view directly for a larger image)

With the most votes of any puzzle, this is also our Puzzle of the Year.

In the last week of 2016 we added two new titles to our e-book store.

Logic Puzzles 101, from Grant Fikes, contains 101 hand-crafted puzzles to teach the art of logic for Masyu, Slitherlink, Yajilin, Nurikabe, and Fillomino puzzles. While we won’t have any new puzzles on the site this week, you can explore this 5-puzzle teaser with the easiest puzzles from each section.

Snake & Variations from Serkan Yürekli continues the successful series of classic puzzles and variations that started with Tapa and Kakuro titles. If you haven’t gotten enough of snakes after our recent Snake Pit week, please explore this new title with dozens of interesting Snake puzzles.

See this PDF for the full week of Snake Pit puzzles from Carl Worth.

If you noticed anything unusual about the puzzles this week, it probably wasn’t an accident. Carl has hidden an additional puzzle within the six Snake Pits. Find and solve that puzzle to determine some counsel he’d like to share with you, perhaps something to use when approaching puzzles like these.

The final answer to the hidden puzzle consists of eight characters (specifically four CAPITAL letters followed by four numbers). Nothing outside of the six Snake Pits has any bearing on the hidden puzzle, including this text.

Our subscribers receive access to bonus puzzles each week. We make these posts so those supporters have a space to comment on these puzzles, mark as FAVES, or log their solving. If you are interested in subscribing, click here for more info.

Theme: Snakes

Author/Opus: This is the 19th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Carl Worth.

Rules: Standard Star Battle rules. Two stars per row, column, and region.

Answer String: For each row from top to bottom, enter the number of the first column from the left where a star appears. Enter these numbers as a single string with no separators.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:15, Master = 8:00, Expert = 16:00

Note: Follow this link for other classic Star Battles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Star Battles to get started on. More Star Battle puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles.

(view directly for a larger image)

PDF

Example puzzle as 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 number entry mode.)

Theme: Logical

Author/Opus: This is the 18th puzzle from our newest contributing puzzlemaster Carl Worth.

Rules: (Hybrid of Fillomino and Snake Puzzles.) Divide the grid along the boundary lines so that every cell belongs to a snake. A snake is a one-cell-wide path at least two cells long that does not touch itself, not even diagonally. Circled cells must be at one of the ends of a snake. A snake may contain one circled cell, two circled cells, or no circled cells at all. Numbered cells must be part of a snake with a length of exactly that number of cells. A snake may contain one number, multiple identical numbers, or no numbers at all. Two snakes of the same length cannot touch each other horizontally or vertically.

Also see this example:

Answer String: For each cell in the marked rows/columns, enter the length of the snake it belongs to. Enter just the last digit for any two-digit number. This example has the key “35522,44462”.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 11:30, Master = 22:00, Expert = 44:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow these link for other Fillomino or Snake puzzles.

PDF

Example puzzle as 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 number entry mode.)

Theme: Clue Symmetry and Logic

Author/Opus: This is the 17th puzzle from our newest contributing puzzlemaster Carl Worth.

Rules: (Hybrid of Fillomino and Snake Puzzles.) Divide the grid along the boundary lines so that every cell belongs to a snake. A snake is a one-cell-wide path at least two cells long that does not touch itself, not even diagonally. Circled cells must be at one of the ends of a snake. A snake may contain one circled cell, two circled cells, or no circled cells at all. Numbered cells must be part of a snake with a length of exactly that number of cells. A snake may contain one number, multiple identical numbers, or no numbers at all. Two snakes of the same length cannot touch each other horizontally or vertically.

Also see this example:

Answer String: For each cell in the marked rows/columns, enter the length of the snake it belongs to. Enter just the last digit for any two-digit number. This example has the key “35522,44462”.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 7:00, Master = 16:00, Expert = 32:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow these link for other Fillomino or Snake puzzles.

Quick note that we’re migrating our webpages to use https instead of http and cleaning up other minor things as we enter 2017. The only major issue we’ve identified in going to https is with the solving applet hosted by thegriddle (to clarify: the way you input solutions and add favorites) which will not load unless http connections are allowed. We expect a fix to this issue in 2017 so that all content can be loaded securely.

If you encounter other site issues over the next week, please comment here or send a private message so we can address them as quickly as possible.

(view directly for a larger image)

PDF

Example puzzle as 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 number entry mode.)

Theme: Clue Symmetry and Logic

Author/Opus: This is the 16th puzzle from our newest contributing puzzlemaster Carl Worth.

Rules: (Hybrid of Fillomino and Snake Puzzles.) Divide the grid along the boundary lines so that every cell belongs to a snake. A snake is a one-cell-wide path at least two cells long that does not touch itself, not even diagonally. Circled cells must be at one of the ends of a snake. A snake may contain one circled cell, two circled cells, or no circled cells at all. Numbered cells must be part of a snake with a length of exactly that number of cells. A snake may contain one number, multiple identical numbers, or no numbers at all. Two snakes of the same length cannot touch each other horizontally or vertically.

Also see this example:

Answer String: For each cell in the marked rows/columns, enter the length of the snake it belongs to. Enter just the last digit for any two-digit number. This example has the key “35522,44462”.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 10:15, Master = 14:30, Expert = 29:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow these link for other Fillomino or Snake puzzles.

(view directly for a larger image)

PDF

Example puzzle as 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 number entry mode.)

Theme: Clue Symmetry and Logic

Author/Opus: This is the 15th puzzle from our newest contributing puzzlemaster Carl Worth.

Rules: (Hybrid of Fillomino and Snake Puzzles.) Divide the grid along the boundary lines so that every cell belongs to a snake. A snake is a one-cell-wide path at least two cells long that does not touch itself, not even diagonally. Circled cells must be at one of the ends of a snake. A snake may contain one circled cell, two circled cells, or no circled cells at all. Numbered cells must be part of a snake with a length of exactly that number of cells. A snake may contain one number, multiple identical numbers, or no numbers at all. Two snakes of the same length cannot touch each other horizontally or vertically.

Also see this example:

Answer String: For each cell in the marked rows/columns, enter the length of the snake it belongs to. Enter just the last digit for any two-digit number. This example has the key “35522,44462”.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 6:15, Master = 8:45, Expert = 17:30

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow these link for other Fillomino or Snake puzzles.