PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between ship placement and shading modes. In ship placement mode, right click gives sea, left click gives circle/square, left click and drag for rounded ships.)

Theme: 2014 to 2015

Author/Opus: This is the 214th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Standard Battleships rules. Use the indicated fleet. (Variable shading of numbers is for artistic purposes only)

Answer String: For each row from top to bottom, enter the number of the first column from the left where a ship segment appears (enter just the last digit for any two-digit number). If the row is empty, enter 0. Enter these numbers as a single string with no separators.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:45, Master = 8:45, Expert = 17:30

Solution: PDF; a solution video is available here.

Note: Follow this link for other classic Battleships. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Battleships to get started on. More Battleships puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles collection.

PDF

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

Theme: 2014 to 2015

Author/Opus: This is the 213th puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.

Rules: Variant of Skyscrapers rules. Each clue represents the sum of the heights of the visible buildings in that direction. For example, if a row is 12534, the clue from the left would be an 8 (1+2+5) and from the right would be a 9 (4+5).

Answer String: Enter the 1st row from left to right, followed by a comma, followed by the 6th row from left to right.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:15, Master = 4:45, Expert = 9:30

Solution: PDF

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

I will eventually have a longer write-up with some stats from 2014 and other updates here (probably next weekend). Until then, I hope you enjoyed our look back at our Best Puzzles of 2014 and are excited for the start of new puzzles again tomorrow. This coming week will have a variety mix, including several with a familiar theme for this time of year:

Monday: Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri
Tuesday: Cave (Product) by Grant Fikes
Wednesday: Slitherlink by Grant Fikes
Thursdays: Skyscrapers (Sum) by Thomas Snyder
Friday: Pentopia by Grant Fikes
Saturday: Battleships by Thomas Snyder

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will also be a Pentominous by Grant Fikes.

With new styles Nanro and Kurotto joining Tapa, Nurikabe, Cross the Streams, and LITS this year, shading puzzles are now by far the most common style of puzzle we post at Grandmaster Puzzles (86 total posts in 2014). As a result, we’re going to give out a few more awards for the Best Shading puzzles than in the other categories.

Half of our “April Fool’s” week puzzles got very high ratings, including this Nanro from Prasanna Seshadri:

This LITS puzzle from Palmer Mebane also received a lot of praise for a simple but elegant solving theme:

Tapa continues to be one of our most popular puzzle styles, both in regular form or as a variation. We had three highly rated “best” Tapa puzzles this year. Amazingly, they all ended up using the same general theme. Will Shortz sometimes remarks that “As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.” Well, our favorite Tapa all featured impressive empty spaces that solvers would need to fill. Starting the year was this Tapa Triomino variation by Prasanna Seshadri called “Open Middle”:

Then in May came “Open Spaces” by Murat Can Tonta:

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Then in October, perhaps inspired by what came before, John Bulten provided “White Hole”:

While really a hybrid of a shading puzzle and a loop puzzle, Serkan Yürekli’s Nurikabe Loop “The Magic of 23” had the magic to make this list:

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Finally, we had some noteworthy Cross the Streams puzzles. Murat Can Tonta used a lot of just four basic clues in this masterpiece:

But the best Shading puzzle, and the last of the puzzles tied for Puzzle of the Year (with the TomTomTom, and the C Major Cipher Fillomino) was Grant Fikes’ audiobook form of a Cross the Streams puzzle. There isn’t really a puzzle to show here, just an MP3 link for you to hear.

All of the Best Shading puzzles for 2014 have been gathered in this PDF.

Region Division puzzles made up a total of 64 posts, and had some of the highest rankings of all of our puzzles making this an incredibly tight category.

One puzzle with a very high FAVE/solver ratio was this creative “Infinity!” Araf from Serkan Yürekli:

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While many of our best Cave puzzles were contained in our ebooks this year, Thomas Snyder’s Product Cave from January garnered a lot of Favorite votes:

Fillomino puzzles closed out our favorites of 2014. Arguably the best puzzle of the year was a giant Fillomino “Dear John” from Grant Fikes that went out to our patrons in April; these votes just cover our web puzzles though.

Tapio Saarinen made a cute Fillomino out of just tiny digits:

Guest contributor Robert Vollmert created a really challenging Checkered Fillomino with some interesting discoveries inside as well:

Closing out the best Region Division puzzles of 2014 were a pair of Cipher Fillomino from Palmer Mebane. Palmer’s not had a lot of interest in puzzle construction over the last couple years, but whenever he returns with new ideas they have been fantastic. Quoting from his email that submitted these two: “This is not really a return; just a couple good ideas that were too good (in my head) to leave undone.” While Tic-Tac-Toe got a lot of Fave votes, the C Major theme earned the most for Region Division puzzles and tied (with the TomTomTom and a puzzle to be named tomorrow) for Puzzle of the Year:

These best puzzles have been gathered in this PDF.

We had 59 loop puzzles in 2014 in several distinct genres.

One of the best Masyu puzzles was this classic “Dominoes” theme from guest contributor Murat Can Tonta:

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Another highly rated Masyu was this Deformable Masyu from Serkan Yürekli:

Three puzzles tied for the most FAVE votes and were separated based on the number of solvers to determine the order of the top 3. With 11 FAVE votes but the most solvers was a Slitherlink (Sheep and Wolves) by Thomas Snyder called “Surrounded!”:

In second, also with 11 FAVE votes, was one of the few puzzles we got from Palmer Mebane this year (almost all of which earned lots of praise). This Yajilin was actually a 2013 submission that we held onto until this year’s April Fool’s week for obvious reasons:

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And the best Loop puzzle of 2014, with 11 FAVE votes but many fewer solvers for a 30+% Fave/Solve ratio is this Castle Wall, also by Palmer Mebane:

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These best puzzles have been gathered in this PDF.

We had 47 Object Placement puzzles (Star Battle and Battleships and other variations) this year.

The best Battleships puzzle was “Solved?” by Bram de Laat where a fleet of seas obeys the outside clues. Definitely one of the most original themes we had this year.

We’ve had a bunch of Pentomino placement puzzles and the highest rated was this Pentomino Minesweeper by Thomas Snyder.

There have been a lot of highly rated Star Battles this year. While it has not yet gotten a lot of solvers since it was posted just two weeks ago, guest contributor Carl Worth’s “Star Duel” has already earned a good number of FAVE votes.

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Not a lot of Monday/Tuesday puzzles got recognized this year with “best” ratings, but Zoltán Horváth’s Pentominoes theme fit the bill. (Full disclosure: Jiří Hrdina independently sent us a puzzle with this same theme earlier without Zoltán knowing. This puzzle was released this year as part of The Art of Puzzles book; Jiří’s Pentomino Star Battle would have probably earned a lot of FAVEs too if it had been on the web and not a book puzzle.)

The Best Object Placement puzzle of 2014 however went to a medium Star Battle with a very visual theme: “Man Made Out of Stars” theme by Thomas Snyder.

These best puzzles have been gathered in this PDF.

During these “gap” weeks I like to make updates to the website and WordPress. This morning you’ll notice a real change to the navigation on the sidebar which categorizes our many posts into puzzle genres. This should be much easier to use to find some of the less common puzzles. For instance, Grant’s Ripple Effect that was highlighted as a “Best Of …” yesterday before could only be found by searching deep in the Puzzle or Variation categories. Now it is cleanly with a handful of others in “Other Number Placement”.

There is also now a set of hard links to the different puzzle authors, which makes a hidden feature a lot more obvious.

This update did change our blog’s style.css sheet so you may need to do a hard refresh of the page for everything to display as intended.

Because of the mainstream popularity of Sudoku (née Number Place) and its variations, we’ve kept Sudoku separate from the rest of the Number Placement category historically. But due to this split, both Sudoku and Number Placement are our smallest categories, each with 34 entries this year. Today we are announcing our best Number Placement puzzles of 2014:

TomTom puzzles add some math onto the Latin Square frame familiar from Sudoku, and one of our Toms wrote the best classic TomTom of the year. This “Count-Up” puzzle from Tom Collyer started the year off well:

Skyscrapers is our other major Number Placement genre at the moment. This Sums Skyscraper by Thomas Snyder, “Going Up?”, received a lot of faves. Is there something to puzzles with “up” themes getting highly rated this year?

We’ve only posted one Ripple Effect puzzle on this site, but it was a rare gem from Grant Fikes and very highly rated.

Our two best number placement puzzles were both “new” TomTom variations. John Bulten, a guest contributor to GMPuzzles, came up with a rather original “clueless” TomTom:

In the end, the highest rated Number Placement puzzle (and one of three puzzles that tied for FAVES for Puzzle of the Year) was the TomTomTom by Thomas Snyder, his 200th contribution for the site:

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All of the Best Number Placement puzzles of 2014 are collected in this PDF.

There will be no new puzzles this week as we look back on the last 51 weeks (and 326 puzzle posts) at GMPuzzles. Over the next six days we will be presenting our “Best of 2014″ selections, using data from the FAVE button at the bottom of each post. Because of a variable number of solvers over the year (and even over each week), the selection process included raw FAVE counts, FAVE/solver ratios, and internal discussions when those values brought up ties. Today, we present the BEST SUDOKU:

While we had fewer sudoku than last year due to a wider variety of puzzles, the sudoku we posted still received rather high ranks.

The best Classic sudoku from last year was Flyers by Thomas Snyder (aka Dr. Sudoku), a hand-crafted sudoku where getting just one digit is quite a challenge:

Thermo-Sudoku is a frequent variant here and this “June Sun” puzzle also by Dr. Sudoku was the highest rated standard variant:

This combination of Thermo-Sudoku and Skyscrapers from Hans van Stippent, with zero given numbers, earned a very high ratio of FAVEs from its solvers:

2014 brought a new contributing puzzlemaster to the website, and Prasanna Seshadri’s sudoku contributions frequently rose to the top of the charts. As a new variation, this “Hamle Sudoku” was very highly rated:

Overall, the highest marks went to another puzzle from Prasanna, one that I both rejected and accepted. Originally created for Prasanna’s Sudoku GP round in 2014, this Basement Skyscraper Sudoku puzzle had to be cut from that competition for reasons of time/difficulty and for having a higher emphasis on Skyscrapers (a puzzle genre) and not just Sudoku. Fortunately, this “reject” got a chance to shine on our website as a really elegant puzzle, and our Best Sudoku of 2014:

All of these best sudoku can be found in this PDF.