Thanks to those who’ve written recently to ask how things are going (both personally for me on this “sabbatical year” and with launching a GMPuzzles subscription service). We’re making progress in different ways, even if we’re taking different paths that we thought we would when we first set out goals for 2023 and progress comes in fits and starts.

On the subscription service, we’ve found from testing feedback that a Discord platform may not be the right technical solution to get started (although it is a good addition for puzzle-based communication and ideation). So we have tried to adapt an approach where we can use subscriptions into this WordPress blog to provide subscriber-only content, while expanding the number of puzzles we release in each week to try to offer something for our existing audience and for newer solvers. We are intending to launch this subscription as soon as the start of July if we can pass final integration tests, and will have some more details to share by the end of next week on this front. (Yes, we will go from no puzzles a week to 13+ puzzles a week very fast, but whenever you are able to subscribe you should be able to catch-up on the GMPuzzles you love.)

Today, for Summer Update #1, I wanted to bring attention to another large Grandmaster Puzzles project for this year which is the World Sudoku and Puzzle Championships that we are organizing in Toronto, Canada on October 15-22. We have gathered a great group of authors — most but not all from North America — and are hard at work creating unique individual and team round puzzles for this event, while also setting up different evening activities to make this a lot of fun for anyone who can attend. Our event website just went live earlier this week and we are now starting the registration process.

Alongside this WSPC, I do expect to restart some of my YouTube videos on different aspects of puzzles, including more stories/perspective from my time in puzzles like “What is a (sudoku/puzzle) competition?”, “How to train?”, “How to construct?” instead of just putting out individual solving videos. I will also have some non-puzzle videos on that channel, since part of this year has been watching out for myself and finding what big problems I want to be solving — where I don’t have any answers yet and still sometimes am closer to depression than I want to be, but am getting physically healthier to eventually be mentally healthier to then embark on my next big thing(s).

So with those teasers for upcoming events for me and for GMPuzzles, I want to wish you all a happy start to the summer!