Here are our best Number Placement puzzles of 2016 (excluding Sudoku which is treated as its own category). We posted 28 Number Placement puzzles on the web throughout the year.

2016 saw the official addition of Kakuro to our puzzle makeup with a lot of good puzzles. This Kakuro (Double) puzzle from Grant Fikes with a Cloverleaf pattern earned a fair number of votes.

Dr. Sudoku added a Sudoku-like unique digit theme to this Hundred puzzle, a style originally created by Vladimir Portugalov. While the style has simple instructions, the intended logical path in this puzzle requires a deduction we haven’t seen in a Hundred puzzle before.

A lot of our best of puzzles this year were part of our patrons weeks, where our authors made requested puzzles from our super grandmaster patrons. This Multi-Skyscrapers variation by Serkan Yürekli tied for the most votes in the category.

Our best Number Placement Puzzle of 2016 was another Kakuro (Double) puzzle from Serkan Yürekli which we posted near Valentine’s Day. More Double Kakuro (and other doubled puzzles) will be in the Art of Puzzles 2, including several more gems from Serkan.

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Today we’ll look back at our best puzzles of 2016, using data from the FAVE button at the bottom of each post. The selection process included raw FAVE counts, FAVE/solver ratios, and internal discussions if those values brought up ties.

We posted 227 total web puzzles in 2016 and have now crossed >1,000 puzzles online with nearly another thousand in our e-books. I am incredibly proud that we have never released a broken puzzle (i.e., a puzzle with zero solutions/too many solutions). We also restarted our Patreon rewards and got our e-store organized to have an easier path to release puzzles to solvers. While we didn’t release all the titles we wanted to in 2016, particularly the long-delayed The Art of Puzzles 2, the infrastructure we built up last year should help us reach our target of a dozen new e-book collections in 2017. A priority for us this year is a new Sudoku magazine that, like our puzzle titles, will bring together the incredible puzzles from the best puzzle designers for all who love puzzles.

We released 31 sudoku puzzles on the website last year. One of our best sudoku is this “sleepy” Thermo-Sudoku from Prasanna Seshadri with a clever logical path.

Another highly rated puzzle was this Killer Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli with a Last Ones theme in the cage clues.

The last two “best of” puzzles came out of a challenge Serkan had with Thomas to try to make a Tight Fit Sudoku that would take at least five minutes to solve. This is a challenging feat given the compact nature of a Tight Fit Sudoku. When Serkan couldn’t do this with classic Tight Fit puzzles he went on to make variations of Tight Fit Sudoku in a quite enjoyable week of puzzles. Dr. Sudoku’s own attempt at a five-minute puzzle, with just odd given digits, required a unique Aha to get to the solution logically — but it still only took three and a half minutes for our best solvers. It was a Patron bonus for that week and earned one of the highest FAVE/solver ratios for the year. [Note: this is one of two patron bonuses to win a Best Of award this year, but they’ll stay blurred on this site.]

Coming back to Serkan’s week of Tight Fit puzzles, the clear winner for Best Sudoku of 2016 was the Tight Fit Sudoku (Samurai) that closed out the Tight Fit Variations week. While quite difficult, it has a lot of novel logical steps and is a true standout puzzle.

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With the most votes of any puzzle, this is also our Puzzle of the Year.

In the last week of 2016 we added two new titles to our e-book store.

Logic Puzzles 101, from Grant Fikes, contains 101 hand-crafted puzzles to teach the art of logic for Masyu, Slitherlink, Yajilin, Nurikabe, and Fillomino puzzles. While we won’t have any new puzzles on the site this week, you can explore this 5-puzzle teaser with the easiest puzzles from each section.

Snake & Variations from Serkan Yürekli continues the successful series of classic puzzles and variations that started with Tapa and Kakuro titles. If you haven’t gotten enough of snakes after our recent Snake Pit week, please explore this new title with dozens of interesting Snake puzzles.

See this PDF for the full week of Snake Pit puzzles from Carl Worth.

If you noticed anything unusual about the puzzles this week, it probably wasn’t an accident. Carl has hidden an additional puzzle within the six Snake Pits. Find and solve that puzzle to determine some counsel he’d like to share with you, perhaps something to use when approaching puzzles like these.

The final answer to the hidden puzzle consists of eight characters (specifically four CAPITAL letters followed by four numbers). Nothing outside of the six Snake Pits has any bearing on the hidden puzzle, including this text.

Quick note that we’re migrating our webpages to use https instead of http and cleaning up other minor things as we enter 2017. The only major issue we’ve identified in going to https is with the solving applet hosted by thegriddle (to clarify: the way you input solutions and add favorites) which will not load unless http connections are allowed. We expect a fix to this issue in 2017 so that all content can be loaded securely.

If you encounter other site issues over the next week, please comment here or send a private message so we can address them as quickly as possible.

Our most recent week of Patron-requested puzzles can be found in this PDF.

For our last week of 2016, we are adding Carl Worth to our roster of contributing puzzlemasters. Carl has made some great guest contributions over the last two years, including to The Art of Puzzles 2, and was an author on the 2016 US Puzzle Championship. It is our pleasure to bring you Carl’s debut week, a rather challenging week featuring a new variation that combines Fillomino and Snake puzzles. Will you be able to solve all the puzzles?

Our supporters will also be receiving a bonus Star Battle by Carl Worth, access to puzzle solutions, and a PDF walkthrough of the Saturday puzzle. If you’d like to receive some of these special rewards, please click here for more info.

In the past week some of our patrons have also received the new e-books Logic Puzzles 101 by Grant Fikes, and Snake and Variations by Serkan Yürekli. We’ll be adding these books later this week so come back before the new year if you aren’t a grandmaster supporter but want to get these titles.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools in linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)

Theme: Nothing Special? (for TheSubro)

Author/Opus: This is the 261st puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Connect each pair of identical numbers with a path passing through edge-adjacent cells. No cell may be used on more than one path.

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of the horizontal line segments from left to right in the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry with a comma.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:00, Master = 1:30, Expert = 3:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other Loop/Path puzzles.

The last week of WPC practice puzzles can be found in this PDF. If you haven’t checked out our recently expanded e-book store, now is a great time to do so.

The next week is another “Patrons week”, with puzzles requested by our top patrons.

Monday: Numberlink by Thomas Snyder
Tuesday: Yajisan Kazusan by Murat Can Tonta
Wednesday: Tapa (Borders) by Murat Can Tonta
Thursday: Crosslink by Serkan Yürekli
Friday: Kakuro (Irregular) by Grant Fikes
Saturday: Letter Pairs by Serkan Yürekli

Our supporters will also be receiving a bonus Cave by Prasanna Seshadri, access to puzzle solutions, and a PDF walkthrough of the Saturday puzzle. Our top patrons recently received a Giant Variant Samurai Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli. If you’d like to receive some of these special rewards, please click here for more info.

Special Note: For the last week of the year, we will be introducing a new contributing puzzlemaster. Who will it be?

We’re back with new puzzles after taking some time to expand our online e-book store which now has three full books and five puzzle packets. We’ll be adding two more titles in the next month.

The next week is made up of “WPC practice” problems Prasanna prepared prior to last month’s championship.

Monday: Nurikabe (Full)
Tuesday: Battleships (Myopia)
Wednesday: Kropki Loop
Thursday: Pentomino (2 in 1)
Friday: Skyscrapers (2 in 1)
Saturday: Fillomino (Kropki)

Our supporters will also be receiving a bonus Bosnian Snake (Full) by Prasanna Seshadri, access to puzzle solutions, and a video walkthrough of the Saturday puzzle. If you’d like to receive some of these special rewards, please click here for more info.

We’ve recently completed an expansion of our eBook store, adding in several titles that up to now were only available to our Grandmaster-level supporters.

Joining our existing titles available in PDF form, The Art of Sudoku and The Art of Puzzles, are these fun collections:

Colossal Cave Collection by Roger Barkan – 100 hand-crafted Cave puzzles with hints to solve all of the puzzles.

Tapa and Variations by Serkan Yürekli – 65 puzzles includes 17 new classic Tapa (including 1 giant), 36 new puzzles spread across 9 variations, and 12 favorites from past puzzle competitions.

Kakuro and Variations by Serkan Yürekli – 77 puzzles includes 13 new classic Kakuro (including 1 giant), 56 new puzzles spread across 7 variations, and 8 favorites from past puzzle competitions.

LOTS O’ LITS by Grant Fikes and Prasanna Seshadri – 41 LITS puzzles including 2 giant puzzles. Also includes hints to help solve all the puzzles.

Fill o’ Fillomino by Grant Fikes – 40 Fillomino puzzles including 5 giant puzzles.

Tapa-Like Loop Collection by Prasanna Seshadri – 34 Tapa-Like Loop puzzles, including one giant puzzle.

We’ll be highlighting some of these titles more in the coming weeks, as well as releasing two more collections before the start of 2017.

Come back on 12/5 for our next week of web puzzles.