Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2015.

While the year would mostly belong to great Fillomino puzzles, this Cave puzzle by Thomas Snyder with an antisymmetry theme earned a “Best of …” honor.

Grant Fikes’ Valentine’s Day Fillomino earned a lot of love from our solvers.

(View image directly for larger form.)

Palmer Mebane’s Fillomino “Married or Single?” also earned a fair share of Fave votes.

The most votes in this category though, and the second most favorited puzzle of 2015, was the Shape Fillomino by Palmer Mebane written for one of our patrons.

Here are our best Loop/Path puzzles of 2015.

The first best “Loop” puzzle is a hybrid with object placement and featured twelve pentomino shaped loops. Serkan Yürekli wrote this favorited Slitherlink (Pentomino) puzzle.

Prasanna Seshadri introduced a new puzzle style this year in the form of Balance Loop; this particular puzzle was one of the best of 2015.

Prasanna included Balance Loop as part of his quite special Birthday Loop mix. Alongside his 100th puzzle spectacular, Prasanna definitely made a lot of great combo/other puzzles this year.

(View image directly for larger form.)

The best 2015 Loop/Path puzzle came from our newest contributing puzzlemaster. With just two clues, Murat Can Tonta’s Snake Egg still yielded an elegant and surprising challenge.

Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2015.

Pentominoes are a frequent element in this category and were part of several of our best puzzles including this Pentopia from Grant Fikes with only single-direction clues.

Two Star Battle puzzles got very high marks this year, both from guest contributors. Carl Worth gave us a theme based around Pentominoes with a smooth solve.

Also quite special was this Star Battle from Bryce Herdt with “twin” galaxies across the top and both halves.

Finally, one of the best object placement puzzles of 2015 was this tough Statue Park from Palmer Mebane with an antisymmetry theme.

Here are our best Number Placement puzzles of 2015 (excluding Sudoku which is treated as its own category).

Creating a complete puzzle taxonomy is challenging. Here at GMPuzzles we limit ourselves to just five logic puzzle categories, but that means our “number” placement term may seem a misnomer when you see logic puzzles with letters or words like our first winner here. At GMPuzzles, whenever a transformation of letters into numbers or other symbols could leave a fundamentally identical puzzle, we consider “Number Placement” to be the proper categorization. That said, this recent Scrabble variant from Murat Can Tonta — despite not yet having a lot of solvers — got a lot of Faves in December.

Our remaining “best” puzzles in this category are more obviously number placement puzzles; all received approximately the same number of votes. First is a classic Skyscrapers puzzle from Tom Collyer with a great solving path.

This Skyscrapers (Sum) variant by Thomas Snyder, part of a New Year’s week highlighting 2014 –> 2015, also received a lot of votes.

Finally, this Kakuro (Hex) from Serkan Yürekli was another of our best Number Placement puzzles of 2015.

While my relocation back to the San Francisco area and new job commitments limited our posts in 2015 compared to other years, we still had almost 200 puzzle posts in 2015 and many amazing puzzles. Today we will be presenting the “Best of 2015” selections, using data from the FAVE button at the bottom of each post. Because of a variable number of solvers over the year (particularly after the hiatus), the selection process included raw FAVE counts, FAVE/solver ratios, and internal discussions when those values brought up ties. We start with our BEST SUDOKU.

This past year, the best Sudoku puzzles featured either arithmetic constraints or series-based constraints. One of our best sudoku featured both, namely this Arrow/Thermo-Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri.

Another highly rated puzzle was this Killer Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli.

The highest ratings though went to two Thermo-Sudoku. Both were puzzles originally created for the magazines Will Shortz’s Sudoku and Sudoku Spectacular where we regularly contribute puzzles. But these were kept for this site due to their unique look and solving feel.

On the easier end was this very fun Thermo-Sudoku from guest contributor Ashish Kumar.

And on the harder end was this self-titled “THERMO” puzzle from Dr. Sudoku.

We’re working to compile our Best of 2015 puzzles this week and will return after the new year with those posts.

There was a seventh puzzle posted this week for Murat’s debut. Have you found it yet?
(more…)

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a letter entry mode and a shading mode. CAPS LOCK is recommended for letter entry.)

Theme: Logical

Author/Opus: This is the 25th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Murat Can Tonta.

Rules: Place each of the given words into the grid, one letter per cell, reading from left to right or top to bottom. All words must be connected, and no words other than the given words can appear in the grid. The dots mark spots where two diagonally adjacent cells contain letters and the other diagonally adjacent cells are empty as in a checkerboard. (Not all possible dots are necessarily given.)

Answer String: Enter all letters in the indicated rows from left to right, separating each row with a comma. Use CAPITAL LETTERS.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 7:00, Master = 10:30, Expert = 21:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other word puzzles.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a letter entry mode and a shading mode. CAPS LOCK is recommended for letter entry.)

Theme: One to Thirteen, Almost

Author/Opus: This is the 24th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Murat Can Tonta.

Rules: Place each of the given words into the grid, one letter per cell, reading from left to right or top to bottom. All words must be connected, and no words other than the given words can appear in the grid. The highlighted cells must contain the first letters of each of the words.

Answer String: Enter all letters in the indicated rows from left to right, separating each row with a comma. Use CAPITAL LETTERS.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:30, Master = 8:00, Expert = 16:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other word puzzles.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a letter entry mode and a shading mode. CAPS LOCK is recommended for letter entry.)

Theme: Spelling Test

Author/Opus: This is the 23rd puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Murat Can Tonta.

Rules: Place each of the given words into the grid, one letter per cell, reading from left to right or top to bottom. All words must be connected, and no words other than the given words can appear in the grid. The borders between all adjacent cells that contain the same letter have been marked.

Answer String: Enter all letters in the indicated rows from left to right, separating each row with a comma. Use CAPITAL LETTERS.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:00, Master = 10:00, Expert = 20:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other word puzzles.