{"id":2944,"date":"2014-01-04T09:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/?p=2944"},"modified":"2016-02-13T18:48:25","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T02:48:25","slug":"best-2013-loop-puzzles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/best-2013-loop-puzzles\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of 2013: Loop Puzzles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We started with two loop genres (Slitherlink and Masyu) and added our own take on another (Yajilin) later in the year. But some Snake, Path, and other puzzles came in as well. In this category, variations seemed to get high ratings most consistently, with a surprise favorite among the group.<\/p>\n<p><a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/dr-sudoku-prescribes-51-slitherlink\/>All for One and One for All<\/a>, one of our first Slitherlink puzzles with an uncommon center, was the early favorite in this category.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/blog\/GM-Slitherlink2-zhnS.png\" alt=\"Slitherlink by Thomas Snyder\"><\/p>\n<p>But two Slitherlink variations would end up tied with higher rankings at the end of the year. March brought us <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/from-the-foxgers-den-9-slitherlink-domino\/>Slitherlink (Domino)<\/a> from Grant Fikes, an entertaining puzzle that gave domino clues and required the loop to be tiled as dominoes (but not necessarily uniquely, which led to much debate).<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/130326-Slitherlink-Domino.png\" alt=\"Slitherlink by Grant Fikes\"><\/p>\n<p>While there were no wolves in sheep&#8217;s clothing in our next favorite, <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/dr-sudoku-prescribes-134-slitherlink-sheepwolves\/>Slitherlink (Sheep\/Wolves)<\/a> from October was also well-received.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/131001-Slitherlink-SandW.png\" alt=\"Slitherlink by Thomas Snyder\"><\/p>\n<p>Among the Masyu, the most top votes went to Grant&#8217;s <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/from-the-foxgers-den-27-masyu\/>extra large format puzzle<\/a> from June (Grant contributed two more large Masyu to The Art of Puzzles which we can&#8217;t wait to show you).<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/130608-Masyu-Giant.png\" alt=\"Masyu by Grant Fikes\"><\/p>\n<p>But the favorite in the category was a much more recent puzzle, <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/puzzle-robot-24-tapa-like-loop\/>Tapa-like Loop<\/a> from Serkan Y\u00fcrekli. Whether this variation has enough steam to become a regular puzzle type remains to be seen, but a lot of solvers enjoyed this one example so we will try to have some more in 2014.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/131205-TapaLikeLoop-SY.png\" alt=\"Tapa-like Loop by Serkan Y\u00fcrekli\"><\/p>\n<p>These phenomenal loop puzzles are gathered together in this <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/2013-BestLoops.pdf>PDF<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We started with two loop genres (Slitherlink and Masyu) and added our own take on another (Yajilin) later in the year. But some Snake, Path, and other puzzles came in as well. In this category, variations seemed to get high ratings most consistently, with a surprise favorite among the group. All for One and One [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[151,47,81,156],"class_list":["post-2944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bestof","tag-masyu","tag-slitherlink-2","tag-bestof","tag-tapalikeloop"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Best of 2013: Loop Puzzles - The Art of Puzzles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The best loop puzzles from 2013, including some Slitherlink, Masyu, and a Tapa-like Loop, are shared. 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