Our most recent week of TomTom puzzles can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts. We also have two solution videos for this week for the Thursday and Saturday TomTom puzzles.

Later today we’ll also be sharing our Best of 2019 Number Placement puzzles.

Next week will feature one of our favorite shading genres, Tapa, as well as some variations. And alongside that week of puzzles we wanted to put the spotlight on a book we (silently) released a couple months ago while updating our e-store. Tapa and Variations 2 is the second Tapa book (and sixth overall book) in the Classic Puzzles and Variations series by Serkan Yürekli. It contains a total of 61 puzzles, 21 classic Tapa including one giant, and 40 variations split across 9 different genres.

Below is a sample Tapa from the book with a hidden logical theme, and we hope you check out the full collection.

PDF

Solution

PDF

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

Theme: 20-20 Vision

Author/Opus: This is the 360th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

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

Difficulty: 1.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 0:50, Master = 1:15, Expert = 2:30

Solution: PDF

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 Art of Puzzles, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

Our most recent variety mix week can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

Next week will feature TomTom puzzles, and for one of our solving videos this Sunday we have Murat Can Tonta, constructor of the Saturday puzzle, talking through the solution path to his hard 24’s puzzle. (Link here: warning, thumbnail shows part of solution).

We also are releasing a classic Youtube video on some Star Battle puzzles, including the solution path to our July 4th puzzle from six years ago and a bonus puzzle which you can play online here (July 4, bonus).

Our Best of 2019 series will pick up again next week after all the TomTom puzzles with our best Number Placement puzzles.

Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2019, selected from the 45 web posts in this category based on your FAVE votes:

We had two favorite Pentominous (Borders) puzzles. The first, from Murat Can Tonta, was an amazingly beautiful 12-clue puzzle with each pentomino letter appearing in “Alphabetical Order” in the grid. That this solves uniquely as a Pentominous puzzle is a true grandmaster’s touch.

The other Pentominous (Borders) that was a best of 2019 was from Grant Fikes, and had a more involved logical solve that went around the grid.

Guest contributor Michael Tang brought our favorite Cave puzzle of 2019 with another fun logical solving theme to discover.

We had a few surprises in store last year, including a hidden January connection to the 2019 MIT Mystery Hunt when some Fillomino (Cipher) puzzles by Tim Marsden (anagrams to Mastermind) were posted in January. These puzzles were actually by Dan Katz, and linked as a final step in another puzzle, Connect Four, from that Hunt. This hardest Cipher puzzle, with full top and bottom rows, was a favorite of 2019.

Overall, our best region division puzzle of 2019 went to John Bulten’s Fillomino with some trademark Bulten-Aha moments to go from a seemingly impossible puzzle to something with a logical path.

All of these best Region Division puzzles are collected in this PDF file.

A reminder that our reopening sale runs to the end of June (Tuesday) with a 20% discount on all titles in the shop (automatically applied at checkout) so please check out the e-book store if you want to purchase some puzzle PDFs.

Our most recent week of Pentominous puzzles can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have two solving videos for Pentominous puzzles from this week, for the Wednesday and Saturday puzzles.

Later today we will be back with our third “Best of 2019” post highlighting Region Division puzzles, and for the rest of the week we will be posting a variety mix of puzzles ranging from easy to hard in difficulty as the week progresses.

[Update: As of 2021, we are now routinely using penpa-edit and more info is here.]

While I am mainly a pencil-and-paper puzzle solver, I always thought GMPuzzles would eventually find some digital outlets. Not necessarily one outlet — our different styles have different needs and a good app for Sudoku/TomTom is probably quite different from a good app for Tapa/Nurikabe — but at least some outlets where we would be content providers. While I will soon have some of my TomTom puzzles as part of one app-based release, this is the exception and not the rule after 7.5 years.

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Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2019, selected from the 38 web posts in this category based on your FAVE votes:

Our first favorite puzzle was a bonus for our subscribers, a Star Battle from Murat Can Tonta with four interacting T’s framing the grid. (We are beginning to organize all of our web bonus puzzles into a new book so that those who missed these puzzles from 2014-2019 can see what they missed.)

Our next favorite puzzle came from Ashish Kumar, the most recent puzzlemaster to join the team. It combined Minesweeper and Battleship logic and required some outside of the box thinking.

For some reason I don’t fully understand, pi-themed puzzles are always popular on the site. Serkan Yürekli brought out a Digital Battleships puzzle that used the first 100 digits of pi and a nice series of outside clues to limit the grid.

Our top two puzzles both used the theme of “two” in different creative ways. Guest contributor Bryce Herdt made this challenging Pentopia puzzle with only two-way straight arrows as clues.

Leading to our best object placement puzzle of 2019, this quite unusual and very logically interesting Battleships puzzle by John Bulten.

All of these best Object Placement puzzles are collected in this PDF file.

A reminder that throughout June, as part of our reopening, we have a special 20% discount on all titles in the shop (automatically applied at checkout) so please check out the store if you want to purchase some puzzle PDFs.

Our most recent week of Star Battle puzzles can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have three video solution talkthroughs for this week. As I was the constructor for the Saturday puzzle, you can find my exact intended path in this video:

and you can also find my approaches to solving the Wednesday and Friday puzzles in these videos

Over this weekend, we have also completed the first part of a long-term project to add solutions to our web backlog. All puzzles from 2018 and 2019 now have posted PDFs of the solutions, and you can also grab their solutions from our weekly PDFs page.

Later today we will be back with our second “Best of 2019” post highlighting Object Placement puzzles, and also a post discussing thoughts on online solving tools for GMPuzzles. And this upcoming week we will focus on Pentominous puzzles.

PDF

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

Theme: Star Face

Author/Opus: This is the 359th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Star Battle rules. Two stars per row, column, and region.

Difficulty: 4 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:30, Master = 9:30, Expert = 19:00

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

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

Here are our best Sudoku puzzles of 2019, selected from the 31 web posts in this category:

Our first favorite puzzle was a very nicely themed Killer Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli with a rocket theme and a visual countdown in the grid.

Guest contributor Chris Green put together a paired set of Tight Fit Sudoku with a really interesting challenge that stretched the way you tend to think about this style.

Our next two top Sudoku are both clueless varieties. First, from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku, is this clueless Arrow Sudoku.

Ashish Kumar made a clueless Thermo-Sudoku in preparation for the World Puzzle Championship that was also one of our top puzzles.

But the overall best sudoku of 2019 goes to an unusual puzzle which was a Birthday Surprise Sudoku from Prasanna Seshadri that was a nearly perfect puzzle for his 28th birthday.

All of these best Sudoku puzzles are collected in this PDF file.