Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2018, selected from the 48 web posts in this category. This category features our puzzle of the year, and 3 of the top 7 puzzles overall! This shows us you all really like Star Battle, so we will be sure to include this in our set of new e-books for 2019:

Our first Best of Object Placement puzzle is this Statue Park from guest contributor Joseph Howard which has some very interesting logic to its solve connected to its theme of symmetric corners.

Serkan Yürekli won another award with this Connected Regions Star Battle, taken from his excellent Intro to GMPuzzles title which is a great way for beginners to learn about our styles.

Murat Can Tonta tied Serkan’s Star Battle with this “classic” Star Battle of his own design with a larger grid and more stars to place per region.

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The Best of Object Placement, and the Best Puzzle of 2018, went to another creative new challenge from Murat Can Tonta that allowed solvers to build their own Star Battle and then solve it. Can you JOIN ME in finding the unique answer to this extra special puzzle?

Here are our best Shading puzzles of 2018, selected from the 59 web posts in this category (our most common category, just barely). We had a lot of great Shading puzzles throughout the year and here the best choices were more closely grouped together:

2018 marked the start of Serkan Yürekli doing a lot more work editing and helping the site in other ways. One of these additions was bringing in a lot more puzzle authors including some of our youngest contributors to date. Guest contributor Yunus Emre Büyükkale received a best of prize for this 1ST-themed LITS on the site.

Serkan also continued sharing great puzzles including his original creation Tapa. This particular Two-focused Tapa puzzle that closed out a week with a lot of two-clue Tapa puzzles was one of our best shading puzzles of 2018.

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This Outside Nanro by Carl Worth was a really fresh variation with a good solving path and earned recognition as well.

However, our best shading puzzle comes from Prasanna Seshadri with another take on the idea of Tapa and Two. Only in this “Twopa” it is that the given grid can lead to two specific answers if none of the clues have repeated shading around them.

Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2018, selected from the 56 web posts in this category (you’ll noticee that with our new publication schedule, the categories were more balanced in representation in 2018):

Looking across each month of posts, we find that the last couple months of the year always receive fewer votes. This isn’t that hard to understand when you consider we posted 311 puzzles in the year so some solvers will fall behind / catch up at different rates with our publishing scheduling. We take this into account by looking at relative FAVE rates towards the end of the year to identify any outliers. A few puzzles then stand out including this Spiral Galaxies with a hidden message from Grant Fikes that we posted a couple weeks ago.

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Two Cave puzzles received top marks this year, starting with this variation Formed Cave including pentominoes by Serkan Yürekli.

The other top Cave puzzle in this category comes from Murat Can Tonta where a logical theme might lead to a fun surprise at the end?

Our top puzzle in this category, and the 4th best of 2018 across the whole site by number of votes, comes from our “grandmaster” John Bulten who pursued another grandmaster-type theme with Chess. John probably has a few different hallmarks to his design style; one is to take a creative new theme idea and execute it to perfection. This Fillomino (Cipher) “A Novelty Against the French Defense” is a great addition to his overall body of work, which you can further explore on the web here and in collections like The Art of Puzzles 2 (just watch out for another hallmark which is high difficulty/Aha nature of the solves)

Here are our best Loop/Path puzzles of 2018, selected from the 54 web posts in this category:

While we post bonus puzzles each week, only our subscribers get to solve them so it is very rare — even though these can be really great puzzles — for them to win enough votes for consideration for the Best of prizes. The challenging Roller Coaster by guest contributor Joseph Howard is the one bonus puzzle to win a Best of award for 2018.

This regional Yajilin by Murat Can Tonta got a lot praise from our solvers with an easy start that draws you into the variation style but a challenging conclusion.

Another gem from Murat Can Tonta came in the form of “Circuitous”, a large Slitherlink puzzle with no zero clues and a fun solving theme.

But winning the category was the puzzle that posted the next day and was called an “Early candidate for puzzle of the year” by one of the commenters. This Slitherlink grid variant from Serkan Yürekli ultimately got the third most votes for all of our puzzles across genres. It is an incredibly original idea for a loop puzzle that has many of the properties of our best puzzles: visually engaging, to make you want to solve it, and then a complex and interesting logical path that rewards the time spent when you reach the solution.

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Our most recent variety mix of Sudoku puzzles can be found in this PDF.

This week from Monday to Saturday we’ll be posting our “Best of 2018” in each of our six genres, as determined by our solvers through using the “FAVE” button on the solver widget that goes along with each puzzle post. We’ll be back next week with our first new week of puzzles for 2019, featuring Fillomino and a Fillomino variation.

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or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use the tab key to alternate between a Star Battle placement option and a Sudoku number entry option)

Theme: Christmas Tree

Author/Opus: This is the 331st puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Classic Sudoku rules, with the digits 1-7 and two stars to be placed in each row, column, and bold region. As in Star Battle puzzles, the stars cannot be placed in adjacent cells that share an edge or corner.

Answer String: Enter the 5th row from left to right, followed by a comma, followed by the 9th row from left to right. Enter a capital letter X for any cell with a star in it.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:30, Master = 4:30, Expert = 9:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other variations of Sudoku and this link for classic Sudoku. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Sudoku to get started on.

Additional Note: This puzzle has been featured by the Cracking The Cryptic channel on Youtube.

Our most recent variety mix of Spiral Galaxies puzzles can be found in this PDF.

Our last week of 2018 features Sudoku puzzles, particularly some less common variations spread across the week. This winter break is letting us complete the editing of The Art of Sudoku 2 and many more sudoku puzzles will be available on our e-store in the coming months.

This week, our subscribers are getting early access to the full week of puzzles and images of the puzzle solutions. Master+ subscribers to the site are getting a bonus Tight Fit (Even/Odd) Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli and an Isodoku by John Bulten. If you want to become a subscriber and get access to bonus puzzles, solutions, e-books, and other rewards, check out this page.

Our subscribers receive access to bonus puzzles each week. We make these posts so those supporters have a space to comment on these puzzles, mark as FAVES, or log their solving. If you are interested in subscribing, click here for more info.

Theme: 1, 2, 3, 4

Author/Opus: This is the 330th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

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 = 4:45, Master = 8:30, Expert = 17:00

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 can 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: Think Outside the Box

Author/Opus: This is the 329th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

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 = 2:00, Master = 3:30, Expert = 7:00

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 can be found in The Art of Puzzles 2.

Q: Are you going to write about your experiences in Prague this year? Did you expect you would ever win the World Puzzle Championship?

Several people have asked if I would write a report on my experiences this year as I finally became World Puzzle Champion. Long ago, before I started this site, I would frequently write live blogs during or shortly after puzzle events, capturing the “heat” of competition. Some wanted to see me write an epilogue, after so many close runner-ups, to conclude a chapter in my life. Many of these championship stories (when posted in the late aughts) were the first ways people learned about me. I now prefer to let my own volume of written and edited puzzles speak more for me.

The live blogs capture my moments of great success and also great failure, as someone writing with full transparency and passion about what it is like to compete. I shared photos of “dirty laundry” — the stupid mistakes a competitor can make. I gave complaints earned and unearned against event organizers (the “So yeah, [insert event] happened” posts). I wrote an open letter that led to disqualifying a cheater and another that unfortunately did not lead to any WSC competition changes and continuing questions about what a Sudoku is almost 10 years later, ….

I stopped posting on that blog in 2013, with a primary focus on my own scientific career and a secondary focus on growing GMPuzzles. The reconnecting with science jobs was a major reason I stopped going to competitions from 2014 until 2017, “retired” from competitive puzzling in a sense. I never fully explained that choice, and I’ve never explained a few things that have had the most impact on my adult life. I’ve separated my very public “puzzle life” from my private life.

This time it is hard for me to answer questions like “did you expect you could win this year?” or “how does it feel?” without starting from a more private angle.

For the very private and introspective angle, continue here (note: some sadness/personal loss covered).

To go straight to the competition report, click here.

The Playoff story and video annotation is here.