The PDF of our recent Spiral Galaxies week can be found here.

I’ve been busy with a lot of things recently (house hunting, a larger role at Verily as I recently became the head of computational biology, getting back in “competition shape” for the upcoming World Puzzle Championship, finishing some new e-books for the site, training for a marathon for the first time in over a decade, …). What this means is that for the rest of the summer we’ll be going to a biweekly schedule with our free web content. Coming on the 17th will be our next “patrons week” with puzzles requested by our top patrons. And then on July 31st will come our next week highlighting a style from The Art of Puzzles 2. Thanks for your patience, and enjoy the great puzzles.

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Theme: Ten Simple Galaxies?

Author/Opus: This is the 27th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster John Bulten.

Rules: Standard Spiral Galaxies rules.

Answer String: Enter the number of cells in each connected group (between bold lines) in the marked rows. Separate each row’s entry from the next with a comma.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:15, Master = 3:45, Expert = 7:30

Note: Follow this link for classic Spiral Galaxies puzzles on this website and this link for variations on Spiral Galaxies puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Spiral Galaxies Puzzles to get started on. More Spiral Galaxies puzzles will soon be found in The Art of Puzzles 2.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a shading mode.)

Theme: Double Spiral Galaxy (the pattern of galaxies is a double spiral as shown here)

Author/Opus: This is the 25th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Carl Worth.

Rules: Variation of Spiral Galaxies. In addition to the standard rules, some circles are shaded gray and must belong to galaxies containing two gray circles, not one, with the circles in rotationally symmetric spots for those galaxies.

Answer String: Enter the number of cells in each connected group (between bold lines) in the marked rows. Separate each row’s entry from the next with a comma. The example has the answer “52,11131”.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 10:30, Master = 17:00, Expert = 34:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for classic Spiral Galaxies puzzles on this website and this link for variations on Spiral Galaxies puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Spiral Galaxies Puzzles to get started on. More Spiral Galaxies puzzles will soon be found in The Art of Puzzles 2.