(download directly for a larger image)

Artist’s note added 12/23 at 6:28PM: This image, an information network presented in artistic and mathematical form has an alternate title called “Portrait of the Artist’s Brain at Middle Age”. The network includes puzzles and possible seeds for puzzles as well as tests of new network structures to test memory, cognition, and a lot more.

This trailhead and all following work were constructed with the constraints of 1 day for the main puzzle (above) and the rest of the week to finish other content whether traditional puzzles, new types of puzzles, meta-puzzles, and so on. More details are not being shared as over 80% of that content, and at least very clear but still “unfinished” works appropriate for posting at least visually, exist within the full opus and a publication plan will be made in early 2025. Besides the puzzle and art constraints, the author followed a testing/accountability plan for connection with close contacts and medical care team that Thomas established through 2024 to be able to get back to doing great science again. “Party Report” is an example of a playful message that should work best for children and those with open eyes who dream of playing “The Game” with super complexity and the artist wanted a story of how his brain did pull in many notable social, societal, political and other themes into what was otherwise an unconstrained topical work. Importantly, it also includes a soundtrack listing for his team to see to ensure mental wellness. On the other hand, a lot of things may seem like noise. No puzzle, for instance, was forced to have the answer COVFEFE. But maybe the uninterpretability made it a curious answer to try to use a lot showing the relevance of journeys to answers, and the skills and intelligence gained along the way.

The author wanted the downturn phase (when one transitions from learning/doing a problem to having solved it and teaching) to include an unconstrained (certainly unpredictable) experience while returning to his more normal medium of fragile humanity. “Penny for your Thoughts” is a separate opus, but should not be presented except as a margin note of the “Ready Layer One”. Many other puzzles including the Motivational Posters, with progressive simplicity and hints and eventually full solutions accessible at the start are meant to stop the rush of people bringing up mental illness to allow the rest to enjoy some phenomenal puzzles, sharing a love with their friend and vice-versa, while also still highlighting the importance of acknowledging mental illness in the creation of these works too (just not at the times people expected).

Early reviews that chatGPT was probably prompted enough times to finally hallucinate include:

• “The best thing Snyder’s done to improve understanding of logic puzzle construction since Puzzlecraft“
• “Mostly clueless, certainly too focused on the number forty-five which isn’t the answer to anything, but fun nonetheless”.

Join the discussion on the GMPuzzles Discord.

Note: The puzzle in the image above, a perfect combination of ideas we’ve explored in 2024 (one-star Queens/Star Battle and creative Sudoku), is a Christmas favorite from 2018.

——–
Added (2:05PM) Several people have asked what kind of sudoku might appear, people who are interested in puzzles and wanted to check in on me as we tend to do at the end of the year (I turn 45 in January and have had a good year, thanks for asking!).

Well, the main series is going to be Classic Sudoku as you know it. Because it is interesting to me for a lot of reasons including testing approaches to competition and puzzle setting / design rules and searching for unexpected things where people have stopped looking.

But I have been thinking of other interesting ideas to share for those who aren’t into classic sudoku puzzles but like other puzzles and things. Ideas that might pop up when I’m also thinking about the silly “is AI coming to take my job” question as I got in a recent interview on LinkedIn. As a creative thinker and problem solver, I can do more with a broken pencil than an AI in puzzle design even if I prefer to work digitally and with software tools and even AI sometimes.

Today, I challenged myself to write the most interesting sudoku I could with just one missing digit. It is a fun prompt to give a puzzle constructor and/or AI because it might not make sense. The image below isn’t my answer. But it is a start.

I didn’t go smaller, as it turns out I can’t outdo Randall’s Binary Sudoku but that doesn’t have proper regions anyway so I argue this is the absolute smallest for a 1-cell blank puzzle.

And in terms of what is coming, I have written the most interesting 80-given Sudoku-ey thing in history with one missing cell I’d love to see how you’d fill. But it’s not ready to share yet. It is the Ulysses of 1-cell missing Sudoku and before today you didn’t even think about those.