Interested in more puzzles? Get more original puzzles at our e-book store, including "The Art of Puzzles" collection with challenges from many of the world's best authors.
Join our Discord
Interested in more puzzle discussion? Join our discord by clicking here
Tip Jar
If you enjoy our free web content, consider giving a donation back to the site or to the authors (name the amount/author in your donation as appropriate if giving to a specific contributor)
[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top: Looking back at past work can show some of the interesting changes with time. For instance, our original GMPuzzles posts like this one from our first week of puzzles used more of a “conversation title/theme” which slowly became just short phrases — or no theme when it was just logical over the years. (Other very obvious updates will include removing the solving arrows, changing solving time standards, and adding in difficulty ratings — we have not tried to make any of those changes this week and have the most stripped down versions of the post here with the goal you might go back to the original.) There is something refreshing to find after reading that “an exclusively logical theme will be revealed during the solve”. I just went through the puzzle again and found it, but then I have the unfair advantage of better knowing how to read my younger mind. I wonder when I’ll run into a puzzle where past me outsmarts current me.]
[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top: This repost from 2013 shows its age as it was a date-themed puzzle, but it might have been the most memorable TomTom in that week because of some less typical logic I found to embed around the repeated numbers. This is where, as a constructor, taking on a rigid theme can force you to explore different kinds of thinking to get to one answer. Yes (highlight to read light spoilers), 13 is always go to be a sum, and 3 is more flexible which will be important, but how do you make some 1’s stand out? The puzzle became the first in our short-lived “Ask Dr. Sudoku” blog post series, a clear inspiration for our future YouTube channel videos. It became harder to keep writing as if I was inside the constructor’s mind when I wasn’t a constructor, but if there is any kind of content this look back is making me want our team to find a way to share more of in 2023+, it is stories like this puzzle, your experience solving it, and then clicking through to the Ask Dr. Sudoku post and seeing how I tell it back — a connection of the solver to the constructor you can’t find easily in any other place.]
[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top about the creation of this puzzle originally on the site ten years ago: Several people have commented to me through the years on the look or feel of a “Snyder Sudoku” — the main example when I think of my own style is something I might share as a new/bonus puzzle on Sunday, from a competition setting and the theme is 100% hard logic right at the start. But other meanings for Snyder Sudoku are about the look of the puzzle standing out too, with esoteric but visually interesting themes far beyond just symmetry — like segregating digits or repeating exact shapes multiple times (like on the cover of The Art of Sudoku four times). When I was constructing the three sudoku for this week initially in 2013, I wanted to make callbacks to different memorable sudoku styles I’d used before in my livejournal days and in this case copied an earlier “missing digit?” idea of mine, with a new composition in the series.]
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: Missing Digit? (opus 2); this avant-garde sudoku poses the question “Is there a 5 in the grid or not?” It is similar to an earlier work by Dr. Sudoku first displayed at the Silicon Valley Puzzle Festival where a different digit, 8, was missing in the same way.
[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top: We continue our start to 2023 by looking back at our site’s initial puzzle weeks, which balanced Sudoku variations with the ten puzzle styles that would be in The Art of Puzzles. Puzzle #2 was a TomTom, a very special puzzle style to me given how much fun I had experimenting with it in 2009 as I took a mostly computer-generated genre to new places.]
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: “After #1, what’s next?” Many people wondered what would come after post #1 yesterday. Today’s TomTom puzzle is one literal answer, but who knows what the future actually holds?
Rules: Standard TomTom rules; use digits 1-5.
(Estimated*) Difficulty: 1.5 stars
Time Standards* (highlight to view):Grandmaster = 0:40, Master = 1:20, Expert = 2:40
*This is trying to recreate our 2020+ type ratings but where our original testing process and number/identity of testers in 2013 was not the same as how we standardized later on in our first year. We’ve made a best effort to bring these historical data to current methodology because people asked for it, but your experience may vary and we aren’t doing “new” testing to reconfirm these times.
[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top: As we focus more on website updates and other changes to GMPuzzles — more details to come — we’re starting this year off by looking back at some of our earliest puzzles. Our first new construction when we launched in 2013 was a “Countdown to 2013” Sudoku. Enjoy it again — or for the first time — with digital solving options not available originally.]
*This is trying to recreate our 2020+ type ratings but where our original testing process and number/identity of testers in 2013 was not the same as how we standardized later on in our first year. We’ve made a best effort to bring these historical data to current methodology because people asked for it, but your experience may vary and we aren’t doing “new” testing to reconfirm these times.
Solve our logo puzzle online by clicking here or download this PDF to solve offline (go back to the original post for solution tracking).
—————
A few stats for our past decade of puzzles:
2,618 web puzzle posts (389 weeks of content across 10 years), from 78 different authors including our 12 main puzzlemasters;
3,800 book puzzles across 59 distinct collections (with a similarly high number of total authors but where completing that count would take a lot more time);
0 broken puzzles / mistakes in artwork that needed fixing after publication (either online, or in our books), thanks to countless hours from our testing team supporting me and Serkan — mistakes in posts was always a critique of hand-crafted designs, compared to computer generation, but we have never failed our solvers on the released artwork;
684,396 Penpa-plus web clicks across 2,684 solving links (we’ve recently finished updating EVERY web blog post except for 3 with an online solving option, as well as having our five Starter Packs also with these digitial options as we plan for more across our books);
802 solving videos to date explaining different puzzles, with a small but dedicated audience of 1,146 subscribers to our YouTube channel.
Longer form thoughts follow, including some introspection: (more…)
While we are still closing out 2022 here on the west coast of the US, we wanted to wish a Happy New Year to those already in 2023 and those who soon will be.
We’re closing out the year on a great note with the release of our Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6, with 60 puzzles across Sudoku, Kakuro, Parking Lot, Nanro, Snake Pit, and Round Trip styles. This is our 17th collection published in a busy 2022, and you can see all the books listed by release date here or can search for favorite puzzle types in our e-store directly.
We’re also putting the finishing touches on Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6 now, and our most recent week on puzzles taken from the styles in that GPQ6 book is gathered in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF.
The puzzle solution videos are on the posts and linked below.
We’re done with posting puzzles for this year, and will be sharing some updates about what is to come in 2023 soon.
Our most recent week Loop Variety puzzle week is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. Our new book Loop Variety Collection 2, with more Geradeweg, Mukkonn Enn, Yajilin (Regional), Equality, and Line of Sight puzzles, will be released in the few days at our e-store. Until then, you can find the first volume which has more Country Road alongside other puzzles here.
The puzzle solution videos, including our first from a guest contributor Martin Ender for the Friday Country Road, are on the posts and linked below.
We will have a Sunday Stumper posting in five minutes. This coming week, our last of new puzzles for 2022, will feature puzzles (and variations) that will be part of the sixth volume of our Grandmaster Puzzle Quarterly series which will also be released this month.
Tomorrow marks an important anniversary for Grandmaster Puzzles. On 12/12/12 at 12:12:12 PM (PT) I emailed out my first business plan/organizing documents to the original group of GMPuzzles team members. A few weeks later marked the first blog posts on the site, as well as a new journey in my life as I’d just made a hard decision to leave a science role/project I’d been working on for several years and relocated to Seattle, aiming to rediscover my goals in life starting with Grandmaster Puzzles.
A lot has changed in the time since. For GMPuzzles, this includes a much larger group of contributing puzzlemasters and other authors, Serkan becoming my partner in GMPuzzles as managing editor, regular YouTube solving videos, and digital solving options via Penpa-Edit for all new web posts and some of our books. Professionally and personally, I’ve also gone through a lot from (f)unemployment for a year in 2013 to growing responsibilities as a scientist and team leader, moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area, all while still supporting GMPuzzles through time and money.
Throughout these years though nothing has changed in our mission to bring you “hand-crafted logic puzzles, by the best puzzle designers, for all who love puzzles”. We’ve posted over 2,600 free web puzzles, released over 55 books/collections including several thousand more original puzzles, and never published a “broken” puzzle with an error in the puzzle art, even if I’ve caused a fair share of typos on our posts through the years.
A lot of thoughts come to mind thinking back through this GMPuzzles journey to date, and we’ll be writing more as we hit the end of the year about what are plans are for 2023 and beyond. We expect to make some changes (doing more of some things, less of others) as we update our business plan and explore other new paths to get revenue by supporting other puzzle projects and competitions. For now, let me share my thanks with everyone on the GMPuzzles team, everyone who has ever submitted a puzzle, and you the audience for solving our puzzles and adding your comments to the website. This community of puzzlers has been great to see come together, to support each other including me through some tough times. I’m excited for what comes next.
If you’ve enjoyed our web content, please continue to support the site by sharing gmpuzzles with your friends, by buying some of our books or by making a donation using the button in the menu to the left to give back to our puzzle authors.
—
Zooming back to the regular content, our most recent week of puzzles to highlight the “Starter Pack” series is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can find all of our Starter Pack books in our e-store, and the 6th volume of “Jigsaw Sudoku” will be released in 2023.
The daily puzzle “talkthrough” videos are on the posts and linked below.
Like this most recent week, our last two weeks of the year will focus on upcoming books starting with the “Loop Variety Collection 2” where we will have some less common loop styles this week including some from the genres in that collection. We’ll also have an unusual Sunday Stumper in one week. Our last week of blog puzzles will then focus on styles from Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6 as we close out ten years of puzzles.
