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This week we are sharing the 10 puzzles that decided the World Sudoku Championship this year. The first puzzle was a classic Sudoku with a ’23 theme and a split of even/odd digits.
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 Sudoku including variations can be found in these books in our e-store.
Update: 2023/07/27 – We have opened up a few more of our subscription puzzles to give people a sense of what they may be missing if they aren’t a subscriber. This “warm-up” Thermo-Sudoku is a great example of some of the new easier puzzles that happen every day (alongside harder content) to get solvers back into our different genres; all warm-up puzzles are fair and interesting, even if on the easier side.
Mastering Thermo-Sudoku requires combining number placement thinking with greater than/less than thinking. How will you do on this puzzle from Serkan Yürekli that splits the numbers and the thermometers apart?
Note: Follow this link for more Thermo-Sudoku puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Thermo-Sudoku to get started on. More Thermo-Sudoku puzzles can be found in these books in our e-store.
Update: 2023/07/27 – We have opened up a few more of our subscription puzzles to give people a sense of what they may be missing if they aren’t a subscriber, including this pair of TomTom puzzles from Grant Fikes.
Grant Fikes has created this clever PairPair of TomTom puzzles, where this is the second part.
Note: Follow this link for classic TomTom and this link for TomTom variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest TomTom to get started on. More TomTom puzzles can be found in these books in our e-store.
Update: 2023/07/27 – We have opened up a few more of our subscription puzzles to give people a sense of what they may be missing if they aren’t a subscriber, including this pair of TomTom puzzles from Grant Fikes.
Grant Fikes has created this clever PairPair of TomTom puzzles, where this is the first part.
Note: Follow this link for classic TomTom and this link for TomTom variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest TomTom to get started on. More TomTom puzzles can be found in these books in our e-store.
Update: 2023/07/09 – This fun and interesting puzzle by Ashish Kumar was the favorite “warm-up” track puzzle in our first subscription week on the site and we’re releasing it for everyone to get a tease for the new subscriptions. We also put out a YouTube video focusing on the special puzzle style of Aqre originally designed by Eric Fox.
No, this is not secretly a Sudoku! But Ashish Kumar has somehow managed to make a mostly easy and fully logical Aqre puzzle with this impressive grid shape.
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the composite Yajilin mode where left click marks cells, right click marks dots in cells or X’s on edges, left click+drag draws lines.)
Theme: 3×3 Boxes
Author/Opus: This is the 104th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Ashish Kumar.
Rules: Standard Aqre rules: Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one connected group. Regions with numbers must contain the indicated count of shaded cells, and it is allowed to shade over the numbered cells. There may not exist a run of four or more consecutive shaded or unshaded cells horizontally or vertically anywhere in the grid.
Difficulty: 1.5 stars
Time Standards (highlight to view):Grandmaster = 0:50, Master = 1:45, Expert = 3:30
Note: Follow this link for more Aqre puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Aqre to get started on. More Aqre puzzles can be found in these books in our e-store.
Our Ten-Year Anniversary Contest is now over and we talk through the solution in this “final?” Smashing the Sudoku series video here:
Congrats to the four winners: Stephen W., Mindren L., Giovanni P., and Barbitos.
We’re continuing to work on setting up a two puzzles a day subscription release model for GMPuzzles. We have a first set of testers now identified but if you would be interested in helping out as we get closer to a beta test, please let us know at ads@gmpuzzles.com. In the mean time, we’re pausing our “reposts” from the past for now while we get our 2023 plans set up, at least for April.
[This puzzle comes from the playoffs for the Sudoku Grand Prix that were held in Kraków, Poland in late 2022. Unlike last year’s World Sudoku Championship, which had no “Classic” Sudoku selected for the final playoffs, the Sudoku Grand Prix had three different classic sudoku among the eight total puzzles including one of mine. While my GP competition set had all used an “eight” theme, I did not repeat that at all here for my playoff puzzle options. My main goal in constructing this was to make a top-level “Snyder Sudoku” — as one of the competitors would call it — where (spoiler for hidden theme and solving path) the very first step is the hardest step. In this case, there is single special pattern to observe in the mostly full rows/columns that will eventually force a number in the center box. The top solve of this puzzle was achieved by Timothy Doyle of France (amazingly in 93 seconds) with several other solves in the 2-3 minute range.]
[This puzzle comes from the 2022 US Sudoku Grand Prix round. Multiples Sudoku was a basic idea I had not seen before in a number placement puzzle, so I decided to use it in this competition structure taking full advantage of the limitations with putting so many eight clues into the grid. It ended up being the hardest puzzle in the competition, but without given numbers I’m not sure there are any “easy” Multiples Sudoku to really construct for solvers.]
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: Too Many Eights?
Author/Opus: This is the 443rd puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.
Rules: Standard Sudoku rules. Also, some numbers are given on the edges between two adjacent cells. Treating those cells as a two-digit number (reading left to right or top to bottom), the two-digit number must be a multiple of the clue. (For example, near a 7 clue, the two digits can be 14, 21, 28, 35, ….)
Note: Follow this link for other variations of Sudoku and this link for classic Sudoku. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Sudoku to get started on.
[This puzzle comes from the 2022 US Sudoku Grand Prix round. This Killer Sudoku was one of my favorite constructions even though I don’t write the style too often. I wanted to get a chain of “last-digit eight” clues into a loop in the grid, and managed to find cage sizes that made good use of 8, 18, 28, and 38 values in this grid. While a few given digits were needed to seed the solving path, that did not diminish the unique “eight” theme visually or logically.]
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: Eight Ouroboros
Author/Opus: This is the 442nd puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.
Rules: Standard Sudoku rules. Also, the sum of the digits in each cage must equal the value given in the upper-left corner of that cage. Digits cannot repeat inside a cage.
[This puzzle comes from the 2022 US Sudoku Grand Prix round. This variation again uses a double eights theme, both with two large eight shapes and a pair of given eights. I tried to have several different kinds of arrows used across the two eights, with a key question of should an eight be the sum of one or more of the arrows.]
