You can find all the puzzles from our Kurotto week in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF. If you enjoyed this style, please check out the book Kurotto by Prasanna Seshadri that we published at the end of last year.

We have three solving videos this week using our Penpa-Edit solving interface. This starts with the Kurotto (Connections) by Prasanna Seshadri:

Next is a video for the “Pairs” Kurotto by Swaroop Guggilam:

Finally, we have a solving video for the Saturday “Empty Columns” Kurotto by Prasanna Seshadri:

This coming week is a special one. For the first time in over a year we will be adding a new contributing puzzlemaster to the site. In this debut week for JinHoo Ahn, you’ll find a set of variations where the clues — instead of their usual meaning — have a new twist to think about.

Our plan is to release at least 1 new e-book each month in 2021. Our first release is a really great title: Araf by Serkan Yürekli, with more region division puzzles like we just posted this past week on the site.

This book is a full exploration of Araf from Serkan, with lots of clever puzzles and Aha moments. There are a total of 50 hand-crafted puzzles, including 12 puzzles across three variations and a giant Araf at the end. Check it out now in our e-store.

You can find all the puzzles from our Araf week in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF. We will be releasing a new Araf book from Serkan Yürekli in the next day or so; come back for more info.

We have three solving videos this week using our Penpa-Edit solving interface. This starts with the Araf (Line) by Serkan Yürekli:

Next is a video for the “Oh Nine” Araf by Jeffrey Bardon:

Finally, we have a solving video for the Saturday “Cyclops” Araf by Serkan Yürekli:

This coming week will feature Kurotto puzzles, which we recently featured in an e-book by Prasanna Seshadri.

You can find all the puzzles from our most recent Sudoku week in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF.

We have two solving videos on paper for the Friday Sudoku by Ashish Kumar and the Saturday Arrow Sudoku by Swaroop Guggilam:

This coming week will feature Araf puzzles. If you are unfamiliar with this style (particularly how to solve in Penpa-Edit), this earlier solving video may be helpful for the week.

You can find all the puzzles (through Saturday’s Skyscrapers) from our 2021 debut week in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF. The solution for the Sunday Stumper will be released next week.

With this being our first week with Penpa-Edit as a digital solving option, I used it for five of the puzzles (Monday-Friday) while making a paper solution video for the Saturday puzzle. We won’t be making videos for every single puzzle this year, but given the variety week and some more challenging than usual puzzles this seemed a good week to cover everything including showing some different ways Penpa-Edit can be used.

If you have any comments on these videos including our use of Penpa-Edit in them, please share them here.

Our second week of 2021 will feature Sudoku puzzles and variations.

Dear solvers,

I hope you all enjoyed the “Best of 2020”. The collected PDFs are in all the web posts and also on our all weekly PDFs page.

Our “Best of …” selection process tried to be as consistent as possible with prior years, but some technical issues with the solving/fave widget meant we did add in web comments and tester feedback as additional signal for the best puzzles. If you think we missed a particularly awesome puzzle, please tell us (and in 2021 keep commenting on the posts when you like something as that is the most direct way for authors to see your feedback).

One small update on the solving widget: there are still users with login issues and the necessary fix requires a larger lift-over of the tool and database to our servers; we’ve contracted for this project so hope it returns to its old form in the next couple months.

One big update for 2021 is that we are going to include a digital solving option with automated solution checking for all puzzles.* We have set up Penpa-Edit on our site, and will be using it in a kind of “beta” mode as we find the best ways to present a variety of puzzles (with good documentation/instructions) including making some style changes over the coming months to integrate the current version more with the site. At the start, a lot of the help may be missing so if you aren’t already an experienced Penpa user, please look for some of our first solving videos to help a bit.

One last update for now is that in 2021 we will have a few “Sunday Stumpers” that are very, very hard puzzles. Seeing how difficult puzzles can seem fair to post if there are solving walkthroughs eventually connected to show the logical route, we will try to post a Sunday Stumper once a month including next Sunday at the end of our “Welcome to 2021” week. New puzzles, including the first with penpa-edit, will start tomorrow.

Best wishes for a great 2021,
Thomas (aka. Dr. Sudoku)

(*One impressive thing about Penpa-Edit as it has grown is that we can cover 99+% of the puzzles we’ve posted in the past — there is only one puzzle in our initial weeks of 2021 where a slight modification will be required to present the puzzle in a solvable form.)

Here are our best Sudoku puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 32 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

With 1 day left before our official reopen, Dr. Sudoku shared this minimal clue “countdown” Consecutive Pairs Sudoku puzzle that got a good number of FAVE votes.

A few months later, guest contributor Bryce Herdt’s Thermo-Sudoku ran “hot” with our solvers, with a nice visual theme and fun solving path to the answer.

While on the easier side, this “Big X” Consecutive Pairs Sudoku from Thomas Snyder was another favorite sudoku puzzle from the year.

A few classic sudoku got strong reviews through the year, but none more so than this excellent Sudoku by Swaroop Guggilam which was clearly one of our Best 2020 Sudoku.

Our final best of 2020 Sudoku comes from Ashish Kumar who made an XV Sudoku with a theme referring to the letters, and a pretty minimal path taking advantage of the “XV rules” throughout.

Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 33 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

This Star Battle puzzle from Thomas Snyder (our first in many months that announced we were coming back) got the most FAVE votes for the year, but probably as much for the news as for the puzzle itself, with 22 stars to be placed with 22 days before re-launch.

Serkan Yürekli wrote this favorite Battleships with a slightly unusual solving path that solvers enjoyed.

Guest contributor JinHoo Ahn wrote another of our Best of 2020 puzzles with this “Double Numbers” Battleships with a very elegant theme and solving path.

2020 featured a lot of Star Battle puzzles on the site and in our store; this Star Battle from Ashish Kumar with a nice symmetric set of regions got a good response from our solvers.

Our final best of 2020 in object placement came in October from Murat Can Tonta, with a Statue Park themed around the corner placements.

Here are our best Number Placement puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 32 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

Our reopening announcement puzzles got a lot of attention and Thomas Snyder’s TomTom puzzle with two spirals counting down 15 days to go was a favorite Number Placement puzzle of 2020.

John Bulten constructed another great TomTom variation, TomTom (Cipher), where solvers appreciated the different logical steps to get to the one solution.

Blending the “thermometer” constraint with standard Skyscraper rules led to this clueless Thermo-Skyscrapers puzzle from Serkan Yürekli that got favorable feedback.

Another Skyscrapers puzzle that was well liked was this challenging 6×6 puzzle by Ashish Kumar with a fairly narrow logical path.

Our final Best of 2020 in Number Placement came from Prasanna Seshadri: this
Kakuro puzzle with a fun (but hard) solving path.

Here are our best Shading puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 32 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

A few of our best Shading puzzles were “Skyscrapers” variations with outside clues driving the solve. The first of these comes from guest contributor Freddie Hand: Tapa (Skyscrapers).

More shading + skyscrapers came soon thereafter from Prasanna Seshadri with this great Kurotto (Skyscrapers) puzzle.

Many April Fool’s Days ago I made an audiobook TomTom set of puzzles (that was not just a set of fools) which was followed a few years later by a Cross the Streams (audiobook) by Grant Fikes. Grant revisited this clever idea in 2020 with a new Cross the Streams (audiobook) that was a favorite shading puzzle.

December brought two great LITS puzzles, starting with this LITS by JinHoo Ahn with an elegant theme (and quite approachable difficulty).

Our last best shading puzzle of 2020 is this more challenging LITS by wormsofcan that asked solvers to think outside the box.