Art of Puzzlecrafting 2 video: 400 posts

As promised, I’ve now finished making a video describing all the steps that went on before, during, and after constructing my milestone 400th post. For those looking for something different on our YouTube channel, check out the video there.

PS: I make a “promise” in the video that if we get to 1,000 YouTube subscribers this year, I’ll make a new milestone puzzle around that idea. Do with this info what you will.

PPS: We are continuing to explore different kinds of YouTube content this year, so feel free to comment on more things you’d be interested in seeing besides daily solution videos.

Canal View by Grant Fikes

Canal View by Grant Fikes

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)

Theme: Twins

Author/Opus: This is the 364th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Grant Fikes.

Rules: Shade some empty cells black to create a single connected group. Cells with circles cannot be shaded, and the shaded cells cannot form a 2×2 square anywhere in the grid. Each numbered cell indicates the total count of shaded cells connected vertically and horizontally to that numbered cell.

Canal View Example

Difficulty: 1 star

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 0:35, Master = 1:00, Expert = 2:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for other shading puzzles. More Canal View puzzles are in Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri and at this link on our site.

New e-book: Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri

We’ve just published our next e-book, the Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri. In this book, the five shading puzzle styles Canal View, Nurimeizu, Heyawake, Aqre, and Yajisan Kazusan receive the Grandmaster Puzzles treatment with elegant, hand-crafted puzzles by Prasanna. There are a total of 54 puzzles, with 10 or 11 in each of the styles; you’ll surely get a workout in shading cells as you learn how to advance from the easy beginning grids to the very hard and large concluding puzzles.

This upcoming week of puzzles will feature original puzzles (not from the book) across these five puzzle styles.

Sunday Update and Solutions

Our most recent week of TomTom is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

My constructor-side video for the 400th post TomTom is also coming up later this week now here.

The next week of puzzles will feature five shading puzzle styles we don’t regular post; these same styles will also be featured in a book released later today from Prasanna Seshadri. Many people have asked when we might be adding more puzzles to our “official” rotation, and one of the puzzles this week will be getting that status in Week 5 as we add a few puzzles in 2022 to the regular publication schedule.

TomTom (Mystery) by Thomas Snyder

TomTom by Thomas Snyder

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: 400 Posts

Author/Opus: This is the 400th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard TomTom rules, except the digit set is unknown. This puzzle uses 8 distinct non−negative integers.

Difficulty: 5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 10:30, Master = 20:30, Expert = 41:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here. A video telling the story of how this puzzle was constructed by Thomas is here.

Note: Follow this link for classic TomTom and this link for TomTom variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest TomTom to get started on. More TomTom puzzles can be found in the TomTom collection, in The Art of Puzzles, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

TomTom by Ashish Kumar

TomTom by Ashish Kumar

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: 1 vs. 3

Author/Opus: This is the 86th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Ashish Kumar.

Rules: Standard TomTom rules, using the integers 1-6.

Difficulty: 4 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:00, Master = 11:00, Expert = 22:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for classic TomTom and this link for TomTom variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest TomTom to get started on. More TomTom puzzles can be found in the TomTom collection, in The Art of Puzzles, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

More Penpa-Edit updates

We’re starting the year with even more updates to improve Penpa-Edit (and a mid-week update because of our excitement for them).

First, outside of the tools themselves, we’ve finished digitizing and adding links to all the Tapa puzzles on the site. We are now about 70% done with digitizing the full backlog of puzzles, and will be handling Masyu next. Thanks to Murat, Prasanna, and Grant who have been working with me on this project for the last several months. The current list of genres with complete backlog support is listed on our Penpa-Edit notes page.

Second, as suggested in this last post (Penpa-Edit updates), we’re starting to add more answer checking and solver support tools to different puzzle types. In that post, we asked for interested people to start to contribute to Penpa and improve the site. I’m excited to say that kieranclancy has joined the effort and already contributed initial tools for Star Battle and TomTom checking that we just uploaded this morning. The Star Battle tools check for row/region and adjacent touching aspects and highlights them for the solver if breaking the rules. The TomTom tools check for Latin Square constraints and in many puzzles for valid cage mathematical sets. In collaboration with swaroopg92, they’ve also added options to turn on/off the answer checking as we expect some solvers in competition mode may not want to be given these automatic reminders. This is available from the Settings menu under “Conflict Detection” which can be turned on or off (for a single puzzle or all puzzles).

Note that these updates are still in beta mode, and there are probably a few puzzles where they may not work or cause issues. So please tell us if you run into unexpected behavior.

SkyTomTom by Serkan Yürekli

TomTom by Serkan Yürekli

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Author/Opus: This is the 358th puzzle from our managing editor Serkan Yürekli.

Rules: Standard Skyscrapers rules; also standard TomTom rules. Use the integers 1-6.

Difficulty: 3 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:45, Master = 6:00, Expert = 12:00

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for classic Skyscrapers puzzles and this link for variations on Skyscrapers puzzles. Follow this link for classic TomTom and this link for TomTom variations.

TomTom by Jeffrey Bardon

TomTom by Jeffrey Bardon

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: The Missing One

Author/Opus: This is the 6th puzzle from guest contributor Jeffrey Bardon.

Rules: Standard TomTom rules, using the integers 1-6.

Difficulty: 2.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:30, Master = 4:15, Expert = 8:30

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for classic TomTom and this link for TomTom variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest TomTom to get started on. More TomTom puzzles can be found in the TomTom collection, in The Art of Puzzles, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

TomTom by Murat Can Tonta

TomTom by Murat Can Tonta

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: For 01/25/2022

Author/Opus: This is the 218th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Murat Can Tonta.

Rules: Standard TomTom rules, using the integers 1-5.

Difficulty: 2 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:30, Master = 2:15, Expert = 4:30

Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.

Note: Follow this link for classic TomTom and this link for TomTom variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest TomTom to get started on. More TomTom puzzles can be found in the TomTom collection, in The Art of Puzzles, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.