{"id":9105,"date":"2019-01-08T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T17:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/?p=9105"},"modified":"2019-01-04T07:42:39","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T15:42:39","slug":"best-of-2018-region-division-puzzles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/best-of-2018-region-division-puzzles\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of 2018: Region Division Puzzles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2018, selected from the 56 web posts in this category (you&#8217;ll noticee that with our new publication schedule, the categories were more balanced in representation in 2018):<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Looking across each month of posts, we find that the last couple months of the year always receive fewer votes. This isn&#8217;t that hard to understand when you consider we posted 311 puzzles in the year so some solvers will fall behind \/ catch up at different rates with our publishing scheduling. We take this into account by looking at relative FAVE rates towards the end of the year to identify any outliers. A few puzzles then stand out including this <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/spiral-galaxies-by-grant-fikes-2\/>Spiral Galaxies<\/a> with a hidden message from Grant Fikes that we posted a couple weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/181222-SpiralGalaxies-Meta.png\" alt=\"Spiral Galaxies by Grant Fikes\" width=500><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">(view directly for a larger image)<\/p>\n<p>Two Cave puzzles received top marks this year, starting with this variation <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/formed-cave-by-serkan-yurekli\/>Formed Cave<\/a> including pentominoes by Serkan Y\u00fcrekli.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/180616-FormedCave-SY.png\" alt=\"Cave by Serkan Y\u00fcrekli\"><\/p>\n<p>The other top <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/cave-by-murat-can-tonta-3\/>Cave puzzle<\/a> in this category comes from Murat Can Tonta where a logical theme might lead to a fun surprise at the end?<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/180615-Cave-EasyAs.png\" alt=\"Cave by Murat Can Tonta\"><\/p>\n<p>Our top puzzle in this category, and the 4th best of 2018 across the whole site by number of votes, comes from our &#8220;grandmaster&#8221; John Bulten who pursued another grandmaster-type theme with Chess. John probably has a few different hallmarks to his design style; one is to take a creative new theme idea and execute it to perfection. This <a href=https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/fillomino-cipher-john-bulten\/>Fillomino (Cipher)<\/a> &#8220;A Novelty Against the French Defense&#8221; is a great addition to his overall body of work, which you can further explore on the web here and in collections like The Art of Puzzles 2 (just watch out for another hallmark which is high difficulty\/Aha nature of the solves) <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/images\/puzzles\/180216-FillominoCipher-Chess.png\" alt=\"Fillomino by John Bulten\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2018, selected from the 56 web posts in this category (you&#8217;ll noticee that with our new publication schedule, the categories were more balanced in representation in 2018): Looking across each month of posts, we find that the last couple months of the year always receive fewer votes. [&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":[30,152,81,169],"class_list":["post-9105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bestof","tag-cave-2","tag-fillomino","tag-bestof","tag-spiralgalaxies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Best of 2018: Region Division Puzzles - The Art of Puzzles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gmpuzzles.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/best-of-2018-region-division-puzzles\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Best of 2018: Region Division Puzzles - The Art of Puzzles\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2018, selected from the 56 web posts in this category (you&#8217;ll noticee that with our new publication schedule, the categories were more balanced in representation in 2018): Looking across each month of posts, we find that the last couple months of the year always receive fewer votes. 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