Schedule for Next Week
All the puzzles from last week’s variety week have been grouped in this PDF. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve also been highlighting some championship puzzles written by puzzlemaster Serkan Yürekli. If you’d like to see his entire 24HPC puzzle set, go here. The Japan dakejanai Zukei dakejanai Puzzle Championship puzzles we featured have not been released yet, but may eventually be here.
Serkan has been an instrumental designer in sharing good ideas from Japan with a wider, western audience; his OAPC series, WPC puzzles, and even his contributions here at Grandmaster Puzzles (like last week’s Dominion originally by Naoki Inaba) are often styles adapted from puzzles he finds in Japanese championships. Next week will focus on another such type, originally a Japanese style 相ダ部屋 that was renamed Araf, meaning “purgatory” in Turkish, by Serkan when I first ran into it at the 2010 World Puzzle Championship. We will have some classic puzzles, and some interesting minor variations.
The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Cross the Streams by Grant Fikes. Our Master and above patrons also received a puzzle we believe to be the largest Tapa ever made (it is certainly the largest Tapa Serkan Yürekli has ever written). If you haven’t considered supporting our website yet, now would be a good time to do so.
Hello, I have been enjoying many of the Grandmaster contributors’ puzzles for years on various blog sites, recently started solving here, and was spurred to finally sign up and support this site on Patreon, partially due to the last paragraph above. I love Tapa, and was interested in the large puzzle described, and was excited to start seeing the Expert+ level puzzles.. It wasn’t until I fully registered and signed up with a support level on Patreon that I understood how the end-of-month contributions/bonuses worked. (and I still sort of don’t)
Having signed up on 5/9, I have to say it was disappointing to learn that it would be another 3 weeks before I could start to enjoy the fruits of the pledged support, and it’s frustrating to keep seeing notifications every week of the bonus puzzles that I’m missing. Although I’m still excited to support the site and am looking forward to the end of the month, I would suggest a more clear explanation of how the process works with Patreon, when bonuses will start, etc. Right now I’m still not sure what “now would be a good time to do so” meant on 5/4, since it didn’t feel like a great time to start supporting once I pledged.
Hi Andy. I’m sorry for the exact wording on this post (I seem to push Patreon every week and don’t time it just at the end of the month; looking back this was a poor choice of words). I can do better and should do better, so I will be clearer with each weekly post from now on.
As a second point that has not been public either, I often tell patrons by email after the first pledge processes that if they are interested in earlier rewards (for instance an earlier e-book like our Tapa/Nurikabe section, or the aforementioned Giant Tapa), I am willing to work out either a substitution for that, or figure out another way for them to purchase it. Rest assured, if you were enticed by the Giant Tapa I will find a way to get it to you. I’m glad to have your support, and I hope the long wait of May is worth the start of rewards in June.
Hi Thomas, thanks for the detailed reply. Looking over my comment it may have come across a little more negative than I intended, I mostly meant to give feedback from the point of view of a new patron. I guess all will become clearer for me shortly, but perhaps the linked ‘summary post’ could use an update to include a few details about the Patreon workings, how the bonus puzzles are distributed, the frequency of puzzle packs, etc.
Thanks again to you and all contributors, I’m glad to support and am looking forward to seeing what comes in June.
I probably responded somewhat defensively because I set a goal of trying to write to all new patrons soon after sign-up, but I’ve been too busy to achieve that in the last few months. While the personalized touch may have been nice, we’ve definitely learned things about Patreon between January and now that should get into an updated summary post. I appreciate your feedback that will lead to an improved site and (hopefully) an expanding audience.