{"id":6468,"date":"2017-01-06T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T18:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/?p=6468"},"modified":"2017-12-09T22:36:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-10T06:36:59","slug":"best-2016-sudoku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/best-2016-sudoku\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of 2016: Sudoku"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today we’ll look back at our best puzzles of 2016, using data from the FAVE button at the bottom of each post. The selection process included raw FAVE counts, FAVE\/solver ratios, and internal discussions if those values brought up ties. <\/p>\n

We posted 227 total web puzzles in 2016 and have now crossed >1,000 puzzles online with nearly another thousand in our e-books. I am incredibly proud that we have never released a broken puzzle<\/b> (i.e., a puzzle with zero solutions\/too many solutions). We also restarted our Patreon rewards and got our e-store<\/a> organized to have an easier path to release puzzles to solvers. While we didn’t release all the titles we wanted to in 2016, particularly the long-delayed The Art of Puzzles 2, the infrastructure we built up last year should help us reach our target of a dozen new e-book collections in 2017. A priority for us this year is a new Sudoku magazine that, like our puzzle titles, will bring together the incredible puzzles from the best puzzle designers for all who love puzzles.<\/i><\/p>\n

We released 31 sudoku puzzles on the website last year. One of our best sudoku is this “sleepy” Thermo-Sudoku<\/a> from Prasanna Seshadri with a clever logical path.<\/p>\n

\"Thermo-Sudoku<\/p>\n

Another highly rated puzzle was this Killer Sudoku by Serkan Y\u00fcrekli<\/a> with a Last Ones theme in the cage clues.<\/p>\n

\"Killer<\/p>\n

The last two “best of” puzzles came out of a challenge Serkan had with Thomas to try to make a Tight Fit Sudoku that would take at least five minutes to solve. This is a challenging feat given the compact nature of a Tight Fit Sudoku. When Serkan couldn’t do this with classic Tight Fit puzzles he went on to make variations of Tight Fit Sudoku in a quite enjoyable week<\/a> of puzzles. Dr. Sudoku’s own attempt<\/a> at a five-minute puzzle, with just odd given digits, required a unique Aha to get to the solution logically — but it still only took three and a half minutes for our best solvers. It was a Patron bonus for that week and earned one of the highest FAVE\/solver ratios for the year. [Note: this is one of two patron bonuses to win a Best Of award this year, but they’ll stay blurred on this site.] <\/p>\n

\"Tight<\/p>\n

Coming back to Serkan’s week of Tight Fit puzzles, the clear winner for Best Sudoku of 2016 was the Tight Fit Sudoku (Samurai)<\/a> that closed out the Tight Fit Variations week. While quite difficult, it has a lot of novel logical steps and is a true standout puzzle.<\/p>\n

\"Tight<\/p>\n

(view directly for a larger image)<\/p>\n

With the most votes of any puzzle, this is also our Puzzle of the Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we’ll look back at our best puzzles of 2016, using data from the FAVE button at the bottom of each post. The selection process included raw FAVE counts, FAVE\/solver ratios, and internal discussions if those values brought up ties. We posted 227 total web puzzles in 2016 and have now crossed >1,000 puzzles online […]<\/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":[8,81],"class_list":["post-6468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bestof","tag-sudoku-3","tag-bestof"],"yoast_head":"\nBest of 2016: Sudoku - The Art of Puzzles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here are the Best Sudoku puzzles of 2016 from Grandmaster Puzzles, as rated by our many devoted solvers. 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