We hope you enjoyed the recent “preview week” of puzzles for Season 3 of Grandmaster Puzzles.

Click here for a PDF of all the preview week puzzles.
Click here for a PDF of all the solutions.

Starting tomorrow will be the first subscribers-only week of this season, featuring Fillomino puzzles and variations. Overall there will be 12 weeks and greater than 150 puzzles in Season 3. Subscriptions can be purchased in our e-store at this link.

We also have a special deal for people who purchase before the end of June 15th: Get (a maximum of) $4 off any other book/subscription on the GMPuzzles store by adding that item to the same cart when you purchase Season 3. This is a great way to pick up another GMPuzzles book, or to catch up on prior subscriptions where you’ll be able to get access to all puzzles and blog posts right away.

After two successful puzzle seasons in late 2023 and early 2024, we’re back to kick off our third subscription season. This next week will again be a free preview of what a subscription week is like. From Monday to Saturday there will be 2 daily puzzles, starting with a warm-up puzzle on the easier end and then a regular puzzle (scaling difficulty through the week). We’ll also have something different for you each Sunday, either a larger or harder puzzle, some experiments with new genres, contests, and other things like you’ll see this week. All puzzles have digital solving options and PDF files, as well as solution animations to help you understand steps where you might get stuck.

The schedule for the free preview week is:
Monday: Masyu
Tuesday: LITS
Wednesday: Fillomino
Thursday: Star Battle
Friday: Arrow Sudoku
Saturday: Skyscrapers (Sum)
Sunday: Instructionless Puzzle

Starting the following Monday, we will have 12 more weeks of puzzles for our Season 3 subscribers, running through late August. Subscriptions to Season 3 are $12 (only $4 per month) for over 150 puzzles.

We also have a special deal for people who purchase before the end of June 15th: Get (a maximum of) $4 off any other book/subscription on the GMPuzzles store by adding that item to the same cart when you purchase Season 3. This is a great way to pick up another GMPuzzles book, or to catch up on prior subscriptions where you’ll be able to get access to all puzzles and blog posts right away.

We hope that you enjoyed the week-long preview of our Season 2 Subscription offering, with thirteen puzzles, digital solving options and solving animations for all puzzles, and more.

Click here for a PDF of all the preview (week 0) puzzles.
Click here for a PDF of all the solutions.

Tomorrow starts the first week of the official season, another variety mix of puzzles like the preview week. There is still time to purchase a Season 2 subscription for $12 and not miss any of the new puzzles.

And if you missed it, you can also purchase Season 1 for $10. New subscribers to Season 1 will get immediate access to the 175+ puzzles, but without the same active blog and Discord discussion that happened when the puzzles first posted.

We’re kicking off 2024 with the start of Season 2 of our subscription blog releases. This next week will be a free preview of what a subscription week is like. From Monday to Saturday there are 2 daily puzzles, starting with a warm-up puzzle on the easier end and then a regular puzzle (scaling difficulty through the week). We’ll also have something different for you each Sunday, either a larger or harder puzzle, experiments with new genres, and other things. All puzzles have digital solving options and PDF files, as well as solution animations to help you understand steps where you might get stuck.

The schedule for the free preview week is:
Monday: TomTom
Tuesday: LITS
Wednesday: Numberlink
Thursday: Star Battle (Hidden Double)
Friday: Consecutive Pairs Sudoku
Saturday: Araf
Sunday: Rossini Sudoku

Starting next Monday, we will have 12 more weeks of puzzles for our Season 2 subscribers, running from February through to the end of April. Subscriptions to Season 2 will be $12 (only $4 per month) for over 150 puzzles.

Also, Season 1 is still available for $10 for people who missed our first exciting season. New subscribers to Season 1 will immediately be able to get access to the 175+ puzzles, but without the same active discussion that happened when the puzzles first posted.

2023 was a busy year for us at GMPuzzles, even if it didn’t always seem obvious from our publishing schedule. Setting up a new method to have a blog subscription service took some time, and we had a successful first season of web content and a good response to our new Discord platform for puzzle discussion for subscribers. We exceeded our first goal for subscriber numbers, but still need many more to make this a self-sustaining product. We also put together the World Sudoku and Puzzle Championships, which was a very rewarding experience although it took a lot of energy that we’re just now slowly getting back.

In 2024, we are going to continue the focus on subscription seasons as our main effort. This week we’re posting the last (delayed) week of Season 1 for subscribers; if you don’t see those puzzles but expect you should, please login again to the site using the subscriber login link at the top.

Then later in January when we have some site updates ready, we will have a preview week for the start of Season 2, free for everyone on the blog, which will show how we’re using warm-up puzzles, regular puzzles, hints and walkthroughs, new Sunday content, and Discord to make an interesting subscriber experience. After that Season 2 will begin and we’ll see how the 2024 plan evolves from there with the current goal for Season 3 to start two weeks after the end of Season 2. This allows us a break after 12 weeks of puzzles for some improvements to be implemented.

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In more personal news, many of you know that 2023 was a year I took off from working in science (and having cell phones interrupt me and other things) as I was focusing on my mental health and recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder. While I’ve learned a lot by reading textbooks about mental illness or memoirs written by people with mental illness, I’ve also learned that I can’t outthink my bipolar disorder and need to be diligent in watching my sleep, stress levels, and taking medication to stay healthy. My focus in 2024 is going to continue to be on my health and on reconnecting with science/bigger mission. So this year I’m going to be having a much diminished role in puzzles, including here. The GMPuzzles team led by Serkan has already started to take over web-posting and other tasks that I had done for 11+ years, and I am very happy to have their support so that we can continue to deliver great puzzles to you without any change in quality.

We hope you enjoyed our two weeks covering the playoff puzzles from the 16th World Sudoku Championship and 30th World Puzzle Championship. Click these links for a single file PDF of the WSC playoff and WPC playoff.

These puzzles are just a small part of the championship though and those PDF file sets can now be purchased on our e-store. Check out the 30th WPC (November, 2023) and
61. 16th WSC puzzle sets in our store.

It was a little over six months ago that I posted my “taking a sabbatical” letter here as part of a time I stepped away from full time science work. I’m still going through this sabbatical year, initially focusing on my physical health/wellness and more recently reengaging in different ways including with puzzles.

It has not been a straight path to find answers, but I’m doing fine, emerging from some depression in recent weeks, and signs like our GMPuzzles subscription starting with very cool puzzles coming through are some accomplishments I’d claim after 6 months. I am still assembling one mission from my different life goals (including, but not only, around mental health) which is now where the next 6 months may take me. I ultimately hope to assemble a renewed mission where puzzles and science and philosophy and a lot of things come together as a way Dr. Sudoku and my network solves for hard problems again.

I recently released two YouTube updates as a longer form of “how is Thomas doing” than the message above. The warm-up/easier video is about a trip to the National Puzzlers’ League Convention in Montreal and it came with this bonus puzzle packet of Tile Crosswords and TomTom. Some more fun easter eggs/check-in discussion begins about 18 minutes in. I hope it can put a smile on some faces if you at least used to laugh at my old livejournal Thomas self.

The more detailed and difficult video, including a perspective on my past science career and what could follow as well as more on my search to understand my bipolar brain, is here.

I don’t expect to put too much more on the GMPuzzles front page about these topics, but I have other channels I will share my thoughts in, including a lot of diverse content for YouTube. It’s been a challenging but enlightening year, and I want to thank you all again for your thoughts and messages as part of my extended family of puzzles. I’m excited for what is to come for the rest of 2023, including the World Sudoku and Puzzle Championship, and then new science/life/bigger things in 2024+.

We’re now almost through the third full week of our puzzle subscriptions and the response continues to be great. We’ve opened up three more puzzles that were “favorites” on the easier track of puzzles from our subscriber votes, including a paired set of TomTom from Grant Fikes and a warm-up Thermo-Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli. If you haven’t come back to regular GMPuzzles solving yet, please consider purchasing a Season 1 subscription and experiencing the rest of the puzzles with many other puzzle lovers.

As additional news, two of our book projects (the Puzzlecraft series that Thomas Snyder co-authored with Mike Selinker, and Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli) are in a special 2023 Game Design Puzzlecraft Humble Bundle benefitting Active Minds, a mental health charity. There are many tremendous books available as part of this Humble Bundle so please check it out.

On this site we showcase “The Art of Puzzles”, with hand-crafted logic puzzles by the best puzzle designers for all who love puzzles. We organize into the categories of Sudoku, Number Placement, Object Placement, Shading, Region Division, and Loop/Path puzzles with tags on each post to find the easiest/hardest within particular styles.

Starting in July 2023 we moved to a subscription system with three-month puzzle blocks. If subscribed and logged in, you should see two puzzles every Monday-Saturday as well as one Sunday special. Please use this page to login as a subscriber.

We’re excited to announce the start of our first subscription season of GMPuzzles. Please go to our store to purchase the 3-month, 175+ puzzle subscription for July-September. You will immediately receive one week of puzzles by download as well as instructions to register an account on the blog (after which you should be able to see the same week of puzzles in your gmpuzzles.com/blog view right away too). The next week of daily puzzles will start posting on Monday, July 10th.

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The rest of this post will talk a little about our journey to figure out “how” to implement subscriptions where we’ve already covered the “what” in an earlier post.

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