Shading puzzles are amongst our favorite puzzles here at GMPuzzles. They are our most crowded category amongst non-Sudoku styles as we now regularly offer four puzzle styles in this genre. But this shouldn’t be a huge surprise; when you have the original designers of Tapa (Serkan Yürekli) and Cross the Streams (Grant Fikes) as contributors, you’re going to see a lot of shading puzzles.

Because of the crowded genre, and many high vote recipients (this is our most popular category!), we awarded six puzzles the “Best of” status for 2013.

While a bit of a novelty, the Tapa Group Think by Serkan Yürekli which we posted in September was definitely enjoyed by a number of solvers.

The variation Tapa (Pentomino) from Dr. Sudoku also received a large number of votes in this category.

An absolutely spectacular Cross the Streams, Two Hard!, happened during Grant’s first week on the site. A lot of solvers gave it two thumbs up.

Nurikabe was the home to the most top ranked puzzles in this category, though. Tied for 2nd amongst the Nurikabe were the 72nd Prescription from April

and the Nurikabe Time puzzle from the second week of January which is the second “clock” theme to make the top of the listings.

But the winner of the category, with a few more votes than any other puzzle, was the “Crypt-Oceanography” variation written by Dr. Sudoku in May. Our test-solvers will remember well that this Nurikabe Cipher puzzle went through a few drafts before it was just right*.

You’ll find all of these excellent shading puzzles gathered together in this PDF.

* (That the world changed its four ocean model to a five ocean model in 2000 did not change the way Dr. Sudoku counts the oceans. Similarly, any planetary themed puzzles are still likely to include Pluto if it helps the logic.)

As we start to celebrate 2014, let’s look back at some of the best object placement puzzles from the last year. This genre involves placing things into a grid, usually with specific touching rules driving the bulk of the logic. We had 39 puzzles in this genre last year, and one runaway winner for best puzzle. First, the very good (but not the very best) in the category:

Battleships (Yajilin) was one of Grant’s early contributions here and, with a set of battleship pieces in the grid as Yajilin clues was quite clever and well received. (The doubled battleships aspects of the theme pushed it into the object placement and not loop categories.)

Shipping Lanes from May was also highly rated. This Battleships puzzle was actually one of two created with this title/general theme in 2013; the other was kept for The Art of Puzzles (and if Dr. Sudoku ever gets his act together to publish this you’ll get to see it too!).

Amongst regular-sized Star Battles, Tom’s Throwing Star from September was a recent puzzle with a fair amount of favorite votes (or favourite votes, as he’d have us spell it).

The super-sized Clown from August got a good number of votes too among the Star Battles, over a quarter of the solvers who finished it marked it a favorite which is the best ratio in the category.

But the puzzle with over 50% more votes than any other, the one that certainly went most outside the box in the category, was Grant’s Star Battle (Corrupted Regions). I’m sure you had the same reaction I did to reading the rule “Each region must contain some number of stars other than 2, including possibly no stars at all” — there’s no way that will work. And then it does. It may be a one-off puzzle, but it is the Best Object Placement Puzzle of 2013.

This PDF contains the Best of Object Placement category for 2013.

We had 45 Number Placement puzzles in 2013, mostly Skyscrapers and TomTom puzzles but also other styles like Smashed Sums. While variations did rather well in some of the other categories, our favorite Number Placement puzzles were mostly “classic”.

The one exception was the Even/Odd Skyscrapers from June with only shaded and unshaded cells to get started.

Two other skyscrapers earned a lot of votes as favorites: Mostly Five, from March

and Either/Or from February.

The others that fit this category were TomTom puzzles including Triple Play from June (also one of the hardest puzzles we’ve posted):

and 1/3/13 from our very first week of puzzles.

While some categories have a clear winner, we’d need another voting parameter to actually choose a winner here. Both Either/Or and 1/3/13 are tied at the top. The five “best” puzzles are grouped together in this PDF.

(A PDF of the puzzles from week 52 can be found here.)

There will be no new puzzles this week as we look back on the first 52 weeks (and 322 puzzle posts) at GMPuzzles. Over the next six days we will be presenting our “Best of 2013” selections, using data from the FAVE button at the bottom of each post. Because of a variable number of solvers over the year, the selection process included raw FAVE counts, FAVE/solver ratios, and internal discussions when those values brought up ties. Today, we present the nominees in our toughest category (with 77 entries) of BEST SUDOKU:

Big and Small from April was a Classic Sudoku with an uncommon separation of givens that also affected the logic of the solve.

Start Small from May was a Tile Sudoku that many found to be a good pedagogical example for how to solve this style of puzzle.

Boxed In from January was a Thermo-Sudoku with an interesting visual pattern but no givens. The logical path was highly influenced by the “box” theme and many solvers appreciated the very first required deduction.

It’s Sudoku Time from December was a late nominee but a popular one. This arrow sudoku resembles a clock with just 5 givens (at 12, 3, 6, and 9) to get the solver started.

And, by absolute vote count, the favorite sudoku of 2013 is:
Jekyll and Hyde, a consecutive sudoku from February that merges that genre with non-consecutive puzzles with a half empty/half full kind of theme.

The “Best Sudoku of 2013” are all gathered together in this PDF.

Tomorrow we will announce our best number placement puzzles from 2013.

(view image directly for a larger form)

PDF

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

Theme: Logical

Rules: Standard Cross the Streams rules.

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the black segments from top to bottom for the marked columns, going in order from A to B to C to D and separating each entry with a comma.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 9:00, Master = 14:00, Expert = 28:00

Solution: PDF

PDF

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

Theme: Parquet

Rules: Standard Arrow Sudoku rules.

Answer String: Enter the 1st row from left to right, followed by a comma, followed by the 9th row from left to right.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 6:00, Master = 9:00, Expert = 18:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for more Arrow Sudoku. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Arrow Sudoku to get started on. More Arrow Sudoku puzzles can be found in The Art of Sudoku 2.

PDF

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

Theme: Three Tees?

Rules: Standard LITS rules.

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the shaded segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry from the next with a comma.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:15, Master = 4:15, Expert = 8:30

Solution: PDF

PDF

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

Theme: Gift

Rules: Standard Star Battle rules. Two stars per row, column, and region. Note: the coloring is just to emphasize the theme and is not involved in the solve.

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 = 4:00, Master = 6:00, Expert = 12:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other classic Star Battles and this link for Star Battle variations. 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, in the book Star Battle by JinHoo Ahn, 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 number entry mode.)

Theme: 28 Dice (Opus #8 in Grant’s series with 28 1-6 clues)

Rules: Standard Fillomino rules.

Answer String: For each cell in the marked rows/columns, enter the area of the polyomino it belongs to. Start with the 4th row, followed by a comma, followed by the 7th row.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:00, Master = 2:30, Expert = 5:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other classic Fillomino and this link for more variations on Fillomino puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Fillomino puzzles to get started on.

PDF

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

Theme: 12/23

Rules: Standard Yajilin rules.

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of the horizontal loop segments from left to right in the marked rows, starting at the top. If the loop only has vertical segments in the marked row, enter 0. Separate each row’s entry with a comma.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 0:40, Master = 1:00, Expert = 2:00

Solution: PDF