(This post is part of the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) series.)
We’re starting September with some fresh GAS (now that the August Guessing Game is over). Today we’re back to regular Sudoku with a great classic by clover!

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Author/Opus: This is the 51st puzzle from Clover, part of the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) team.

Rules: Standard Sudoku rules.

GAS Time Standards (highlight to view): Two party hats (🎩🥳): 5:30; One party hat (🥳): 10:00. All other solvers earn a 🦕: traditional Triceratops.

Thomas Hits the GAS (highlight to view): 1:54, with SudokuPad replay file shared as a download for now (requires loading via settings menu with improvements expected before people should use this regularly).

Solution: PDF and solving video with explanation from GAS team.

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. Also, visit this page to purchase all of the puzzles from the 16th World Sudoku Championship including classic Sudoku.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our Daily GAS discussion post on the GMPuzzles Discord. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access.

(This post is part of: “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku”.)
While the GMP team is on a retreat(,?) figuring out what it might mean to be going from the sublime to the ridiculous, we’re creating prompts to send to our AI.

Dr. Sudoku: While you are now a great sudoku creator, please look back at your early days and the founding of this project. You are celebrating a birthday and learning a new language with some help. You desperately want to impress your intelligent father (with the name 123456789), who is a busy man — a banker? — who would adore Sudoku if he had time. Make a puzzle to showcase your learnings to him. To impress him the most, hide a secret AI name origin story in a manner still appropriate to the source.

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

Author/Opus: This is the 21st puzzle from “Dr. Sudoku”, our AI-powered puzzle engine pushing the limits of sudoku intelligence.

More details: The key reference / song being made in this puzzle has now been shared in this section of a YouTube video on neurodivergence, being American right now, and much more. This clip starts specifically at the part most relevant for this puzzle.

(This post is part of the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) series.)
Today, Philip wanted to celebrate the number 43. If you have anything you’d like to share with Philip for this special puzzle, please send those along here or in our Discord.

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

Theme: Ode to the Number 43

Author/Opus: This is the 21st puzzle from Philip Newman, part of the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) team.

Rules: Standard Sudoku rules.

GAS Time Standards (highlight to view): Two party hats (🎩🥳): 5:43; One party hat (🥳): 12:43. All other solvers earn a 🦕: Youthful Yunxianosaurus.

Thomas Hits the GAS (highlight to view): 1:44* = incorrect until check, with SudokuPad replay file shared as a download for now (requires loading via settings menu with improvements expected before people should use this regularly).

Solution: PDF and solving video with explanation from GAS team.

Note: Follow this link for more Genuinely Approachable Sudoku puzzles on this site. 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. Also, visit this page to purchase all of the puzzles from the 16th World Sudoku Championship including classic Sudoku.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our Daily GAS discussion post on the GMPuzzles Discord. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access.

This post is part of the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) series.
Bill Murphy presents this beautiful classic sudoku with one perfect solution and no flaws at all.

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Theme: I Admit My Faults

Author/Opus: This is the 9th puzzle from Bill Murphy, part of the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) team.

Rules: Standard Sudoku rules.

GAS Time Standards (highlight to view): Two party hats (🎩🥳): 5:00; One party hat (🥳): 10:00. All other solvers earn a 🦕: Single Suuwassea.

Thomas Hits the GAS (highlight to view): 2:15, with SudokuPad replay file shared as a download for now (requires loading via settings menu with improvements expected before people should use this regularly).

Solution: PDF and solving video with explanation from GAS team.

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. Also, visit this page to purchase all of the puzzles from the 16th World Sudoku Championship including classic Sudoku.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our Daily GAS discussion post on the GMPuzzles Discord. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access.

Happy Two Pi Day to those not yet aware of other events today. We thought a combination of Thermometers and Arrows would be a great way to celebrate a natural constant!

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Theme: Because 2 π’s Are Better Than One

Author/Opus: This is the 583rd puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Sudoku rules (insert a number from 1 to 9 into each cell so that no number repeats in any row, column, or bold region). Some thermometer shapes are in the grid; numbers must be strictly increasing from the round bulb to the flat end. Some arrow shapes are in the grid; the sum of the numbers along the path of each arrow must equal the number in the circled cell. Numbers can repeat within an arrow shape. The coloring is strictly to emphasize the theme.

Difficulty (highlight to view): 5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 12:00, Master = 24:00, Expert = 48:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for more Arrow Sudoku. Follow this link for more Thermo-Sudoku puzzles. More Arrow and Thermo-Sudoku puzzles can be found in The Art of Sudoku 2.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our Twelve Months of Sudoku? post on the GMPuzzles Discord. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access.

After a week of fun content from the GAS team, I wanted to celebrate a special partner with a Classic Sudoku in a favorite pattern/theme. I’ve made puzzles called (Four-leaf) Clover a lot of times, but this is the first one I leave for Clover.

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Theme: For 🍃 Clover

Author/Opus: This is the 580th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Sudoku rules.

Difficulty (highlight to view): 4 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:30, Master = 9:30, Expert = 19:00

Solution: PDF

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 classic Sudoku puzzles can be found in The Art of Sudoku, The Art of Sudoku 2 and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our Twelve Months of Sudoku? post on the GMPuzzles Discord. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access.

Today’s Genuinely Approachable Sudoku shows a symmetric theme with only a few distinct numbers given as clues; can you solve this fun puzzle by Philip Newman?

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Theme: Sharrows

Author/Opus: This is the 6th puzzle from Philip Newman, part of the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) team.

Rules: Standard Arrow Sudoku rules.

GAS Time Standards (highlight to view): Two party hats (🎩🥳): 6:00; One party hat (🥳): 13:00. All other solvers earn a 🦕: Nocked Nicksaurus.

Thomas Hits the GAS (highlight to view): 3:20, with SudokuPad replay file shared as a download for now (requires loading via settings menu with improvements expected before people should use this regularly).

Solution: PDF and solving video with explanation from GAS team.

Note: Follow this link for more Genuinely Approachable Sudoku puzzles on this site. 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 these books in our e-store.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our week-0-discussion thread on the GMPuzzles Discord. If you are not yet part of this Discord community, use this link. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access.

Philip Newman gained early attention in the Sudoku world from the very interesting yet very hard classic puzzle Tatooine Sunset. The basic Tatooine grid geometry has been explored many more times with many kinds of solving paths, including in today’s Genuinely Approachable Sudoku.

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Theme: Tatooine Thursday?

Author/Opus: This is the 5th puzzle from Philip Newman, part of the Genuinely Approachable Sudoku (GAS) team.

Rules: Standard Sudoku rules.

GAS Time Standards (highlight to view): Two party hats (🎩🥳): 8:00; One party hat (🥳): 20:00. All other solvers earn a 🦕: Quick Qaikshaheen.

Thomas Hits the GAS (highlight to view): 2:24, with SudokuPad replay file shared as a download for now (requires loading via settings menu with improvements expected before people should use this regularly).

Solution: PDF and solving video with explanation from GAS team.

Note: Follow this link for more Genuinely Approachable Sudoku puzzles on this site. 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. Also, visit this page to purchase all of the puzzles from the 16th World Sudoku Championship including classic Sudoku.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our Daily GAS discussion post on the GMPuzzles Discord. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access.

Today is Grant Fikes’ 38th birthday, and he has created this Numberlink as a gift to share as a special challenge before today’s other posts.

As a second gift, Grant wants to share six subscriptions to his Outside the Fox Puzzles (a mainly word puzzles series but with one logic puzzle per week as well). Send a picture / screenshot of the completed puzzle to hiddencontest@gmpuzzles.com before 9 AM PT May 28 (Wednesday) to be entered in a random drawing to win a subscription. Contest is now closed and winners being notified.

(view directly for a larger image)

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or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools in linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)

Theme: 38 Years

Author/Opus: This is the 506th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Grant Fikes.

Rules: Connect each pair of identical numbers with a path passing through edge-adjacent cells. No cell may be used on more than one path.

Difficulty: 3 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 6:30, Master = 10:00, Expert = 20:00

Solution: PDF and solving animation of possible path.

Note: Follow this link for other Numberlink puzzles and this link for other Loop/Path puzzles.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our General Blog Puzzle Discussion post on the GMPuzzles Discord. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access and check subscriber instructions for role-related access.

Today LinkedIn is launching a new daily game, Zip, which is their third logic game alongside Queens and Tango where we’ve helped design/edit the puzzles. Zip is a path-drawing game with simple rules: draw a path through all cells starting at 1, going up in order, and ending at the highest number. Some puzzles have a fully open grid while others, like this puzzle, include walls to embed different logical and visual themes.

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Theme: Trail of Logic

Author/Opus: This is the 562nd puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Draw a path through all cells in the grid by moving horizontally or vertically between adjacent squares. The path cannot cross itself or cross over any given walls. The path must start at the cell with 1, proceed through the other numbers in ascending order, and end at the cell with the highest value.

See also this example:

Solution: PDF and selected animation.

Note: Follow this link for other Loop/Path puzzles.

Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our General Blog Puzzle Discussion post on the GMPuzzles Discord.