(Note: This puzzle is at a Saturday+ difficulty, and is being posted today to mark the occasion of Prasanna’s birthday. Our regular “easy” puzzles will run on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.)

(View image directly for larger form.)

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools in yajilin mode where left click shades squares, left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s; note that the default puzzle info is too long — even for an url shortener — so copy and paste all the text in this file into the “Load” option in the upper-right of the penpa-edit interface to access.)

Theme: 24 on 03/02/15

Author/Opus: This is the 73rd puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Prasanna Seshadri.

Rules: This puzzle combines four loop varieties commonly featured at GMPuzzles: Balance Loop (upper left), Yajilin (upper right), Castle Wall (lower left), and Masyu (lower right).

Draw a single, non-intersecting loop throughout all four quadrants. The loop may enter and exit the different quadrants as many times as needed.

The standard rules for each puzzle type are true for each quadrant, with these additional considerations:

Balance Loop: Use the entire length of segments (including parts of the segments that extend into an adjacent quadrant) when determining the balanced/unbalanced status of a circle clue.

Yajilin: The arrow clues refer only to shaded cells within the Yajilin quadrant. The loop must occupy all cells adjacent to a shaded cell, even in an adjacent quadrant.

Castle Wall: Number clues can see beyond the CW quadrant ONLY IF the line segment begins from a cell within the CW quadrant. (For example, if a segment starts in the rightmost column of the CW quadrant and goes three cells further to the right into the Masyu quadrant before turning, this segment would contribute 3 to the count of segments for that row.)

Masyu: Normal rules apply for white and black circles, but the path satisfying these rules can extend into an adjacent quadrant. (For example, a white circle can be passed through crossing a quadrant edge, provided it turns immediately on one side of the circle whether the turn is in the Masyu quadrant or in another quadrant.)

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 = 30:00, Master = 55:00, Expert = 1:50:00

Solution: PDF

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Our recent week of Balance Loop puzzles is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Balance Loop puzzles (that are only in these books and not on our website) can be found in our e-store at this link.

The daily solution videos, this week from Prasanna, are on the posts and linked below:

Astute observers may have noticed that Japanese Sums was recently added to our Number Placement puzzle list on the main blog roster. We’ve also fully digitized the Penpa backlog for it. This upcoming week will feature this “new” puzzle to the website, as well as a Sunday Stumper next week. Japanese Sums will also be one of the six puzzle styles in Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 4 which will be released later today, so watch for more information on that.

Our recent week of Sudoku puzzles is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. Many more original Sudoku puzzles (that have not been on our blog) can be found in our e-store at this link including our popular The Art of Sudoku series and the Masterpiece Sudoku Mixes.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

Our next week of puzzles features Balance Loop puzzles.

We’ve just published our third volume of the Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly series. This title contains sixty puzzles across these genres: Thermo-Sudoku, Skyscrapers, Battleships, Cross the Streams, Kuromasu, and Balance Loop. Go to the link above to purchase the book PDF file. This marks two books released in two weeks after our Starter Pack 2: Tapa title was launched last Sunday.

Our past week of “Starter Pack” Variety puzzles is in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More easy puzzles for people learning new puzzles can be found in our store.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

Our next week of puzzles features Slitherlink and variations, which will also be a theme for an upcoming puzzle book later this spring.

I wanted to start some of our 2022 updates for the year by sharing this draft schedule for our books, with most detail set for the first six months of the year. We are continuing our Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly and Masterpiece Sudoku Mix series that we launched in 2021, and also starting a new, accessible puzzle series of “Starter Packs” for people to get into some of our different logic styles. In the same style as the Intro to GMPuzzles books, these Starter Packs will contain ~30 puzzles for ~$1.50 and all puzzles are from 1-2.5 stars in approximate difficulty. Eventually, as we release these books, we will also rebuild the web flow for these styles so that there is a way besides the “blog” to learn about the puzzles, how to use Penpa, and so on.

Book list:
1. Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri (January)
2. Starter Pack 1: Fillomino by Grant Fikes (February)
3. Masterpiece Sudoku Mixes 5 and 6 (Tight Fit Sudoku and Consecutive Pairs Sudoku) (early March)
4. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 3 featuring Thermo-Sudoku, Skyscrapers, Battleships, Cross the Streams, Kuromasu, Balance Loop (late March)
5. Starter Pack 2: Tapa by Serkan Yürekli (April)
6. Slitherlink and Variations 2 (April)
7. Tapa and Variations 3 (May)
8. Starter Pack 3: TomTom by Thomas Snyder (June)
9. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 4 featuring Even/Odd Sudoku, Japanese Sums, Minesweeper, Nurikabe, Pentominous, Castle Wall (late June)
10. Masterpiece Sudoku Mixes 7 and 8 (July)
11. Starter Pack 4: Slitherlink by Takeya Saikachi (late July/early August)
12. Loop Variety Collection 2 (August)
13. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 5 (September)
14. TBD title (October)
15. Starter Pack 5: Star Battle by JinHoo Ahn (October)
16. TBD title (November)
17. Starter Pack 6: Jigsaw Sudoku by Thomas Snyder (December)
18. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 6 (December)

The eighteen book schedule is ambitious but lets us diversify the kinds of titles and different puzzles we are publishing while also taking up new goals like getting Penpa/digital solving forms of these by sometime this year.

Not on the “official” list, but part of projects I am working on separately, are releases containing our old patron puzzles including our “Giant” puzzles, starting a Giants annual book, and rereleasing some of my older books of sudoku variants and TomTom puzzles. There is also a very different but interesting puzzle collection book that has been stuck in editing that we hope to get out.

Paired with this schedule, we have also started to look at how easily we can set up a “subscription” in our book store to automatically release these titles to people who want to have all books in a given series like GPQ or who want all books that we publish.

Later today we will be releasing two new parts of our Masterpiece Sudoku Mix series, as well as details on a “Cyber Monday” week sale for our puzzle books. As another Thanksgiving Holiday bonus, we finished digitizing four more puzzle styles in our backlog for solving with Penpa-Edit. The new additions are Cave, Castle Wall, Balance Loop, and Statue Park. We are now over 1,150 total puzzles digitized, over half of our website.

Our past week with Tapa-Like Loop puzzles is collected in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Tapa-Like Loop puzzles can be found in the Tapa-Like Loop Collection by Prasanna Seshadri.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

This next week will feature a variety mix with “one grid, two puzzles” where the clues in each grid can be solved in two different ways. We’ll post the first puzzle style at 9 AM PT and the second style at 9 PM PT, but solvers can try to guess what style is the second puzzle in the time between postings. Some will be more obvious than others. And while the 9 AM puzzles will follow our usual Monday-Saturday difficulty progression, the paired puzzles will not. There will also be a Sunday Stumper next week with a seventh puzzle in this set of pairs.

Prasanna is celebrating two milestones this week and we will have two special large puzzles. The first one here recognizes Prasanna’s 200th submission on GMPuzzles, and combines three of the styles where Prasanna has written books for our e-store.

(view directly for a larger image)

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; while solution checking is not enabled, if you are comfortable with the different tool selection options you should be able to fully solve the puzzle in this mode too.)

Theme: Linking 200 cells

Author/Opus: This is the 200th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Prasanna Seshadri.

Rules:

Grids 1-2: Follow regular LITS rules. Between the two LITS grids, the corresponding white cells can never both be shaded, while the corresponding gray cells must be identical in the three 200-shaped regions.

Use the LITS solutions and your ingenuity to discover the needed constraints for Grids 3-4. For Grid 3, you will find that some gray circles must change color to white or black.

Grid 3: Follow regular Balance Loop rules. Additionally, the loop must cross itself if it passes through a gray circle. The loop must go straight throught the gray circle both times; in one direction the path behaves as if the circle is white with equal loop lengths, and in the other direction the path behaves as if the circle is black with unequal loop lengths. It is not required that the loop pass through all of the gray circles (but it must pass through all white and black circles). (See also the image below.)

Grid 4: Follow regular Yajilin rules.

When taken together, the grids yield a short final answer! Send this (less than five character) string to hiddencontest at gmpuzzles dot com by March 14th, 2021 to be eligible to win an e-book by Prasanna Seshadri. The contest is now closed and results summarized here.

Difficulty: 5 stars?

Solution: PDF

Last week’s set of Balance Loop puzzles is collected in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. If you enjoyed these puzzles, our latest ebook Balance Loop by Prasanna Seshadri and Murat Can Tonta was just added to our web store with 55 puzzles including 34 regular Balance Loops, 20 variations across five styles, and one giant hybrid at the end.

Again I have made solving videos in Penpa-Edit for all of the Balance Loops from this week so check these out if you are still learning this interesting puzzle style:

This upcoming week features TomTom puzzles as well as two surprises from Prasanna Seshadri (including one coming very soon today that will be our first “contest puzzle” in awhile).

Last week’s set of Star Battle puzzles is collected in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. If you enjoyed these puzzles, look for more Star Battles in our store.

Now that I’m routinely checking all our puzzles in Penpa-Edit and playing with solving interfaces, I once again filmed my solves for all the puzzles in the week which may offer different tips on Star Battle and also show some of the custom interfaces that can be used during solving. (Getting edge/border notation to be a default and not just a custom option is still a goal).

This upcoming week features Balance Loop puzzles, and at the end of the week we will add a new Balance Loop e-book by Prasanna Seshadri and Murat Can Tonta to our e-store. We’ll may also have another Sunday surprise or two coming up so stay tuned.