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.

Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 31 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

The Saturday challenge from our first week of web puzzles was a delightful Fillomino puzzle from guest contributor Elyot Grant.

As we reached the end of June, we posted what was one of the highest rated (and also fairly hard) puzzles of the whole year: a Pentominous by JinHoo Ahn, another guest contributor who surprised us with a lot of great submissions this year.

Puzzlemaster Prasanna Seshadri shared an Araf puzzle with different clusters of small and big numbers and a very elegant logical solving path.

November included a really great Cave puzzle from William Hu, with a beautiful all odd theme and clever logic to be found on the solving path.

And our last post of 2020 also got a good response from our solvers and closes out this Best of set: this Fillomino (Checkered) variation by Jonas Gleim.

Here are our best Loop/Path puzzles of 2020, in chronological order, selected from the 26 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 lot of our early puzzles as we were relaunching the website got a good number of FAVE votes. And we seemed to start out strong with this first regular post: an antisymmetric no-numbers Balance Loop by Murat Can Tonta.

Murat had another favorite puzzle with this “Parallel Universes” Slitherlink with an interesting logical path around the grid.

Serkan Yürekli put a little uncertainty into this Slitherlink variation with several missing numbers that must fulfill Sudoku-like constraints. The logical challenge got a lot of favorable comments.

Serkan delighted us again in September with a visually beautiful Snake (Cipher) puzzle that announces itself on the outside of the grid.

Our final best Loop/Path puzzle of 2020 comes from this November post from Tom Collyer, who focused on some less common patterns to give us a really challenging Slitherlink.

This was our last week of puzzles for 2020. You can find the set of Fillomino puzzles in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have a solving video for the last two puzzles in the week, including Friday’s Catch-13 Fillomino by Ashish Kumar:

and Saturday’s Fillomino (Checkered) by Jonas Gleim:

We also have a holiday gift for everyone, as we have posted all of our solving videos from before 2020 on Youtube (a total of over 100 walkthroughs)! These are linked to the individual posts if exploring the old archive and also captured on this page. These were filmed with earlier techniques, so some have slightly worse visual/audio quality than we are trying to achieve now, but there is a lot to learn by exploring the videos. I will soon have a new document camera to improve my recording even more, and next year may even try some new kinds of videos like blind solves of competition puzzles and also “basic rules and info” videos for the puzzle styles to better introduce beginners to a new style including its history and basic constraints. Tell us what you’d like to see from future solving videos.

We’ll be taking the next two weeks off to organize our Best of 2020 list and prepare for the start of 2021 puzzles. 2020 has been a full (if challenging) year, with me starting a new job in March and having a lot more responsibilities in leading a large team advancing immunology assays as potential diagnostic tests across diseases. But by adding Serkan Yürekli as our Managing Editor, we together got back to posting 30 straight weeks of puzzles, with at least 2 solving videos each week, and also released 7 new books of puzzles. We have a lot to come in 2021, including more books, the implementation of more routine online solving, a new puzzlemaster and more.

JinHoo Ahn has shared a lot of great web puzzles this year (some that will likely be very competitive for Best of 2020), so I’m quite excited to announce the release of our first book of puzzles from this talented designer, Star Battle.

This book is a collection of 50 Star Battle puzzles, including 15 variations, that have some very nice visual themes and interesting logic. The difficulty ranges from easy to hard, and includes ten 3-star 15×15 puzzles (two of which are variations) and a massive 6-star 30×30 puzzle to finish. Check it out now in our e-store.

We’ll be back later today with the launch of a Star Battle book by JinHoo Ahn, as well as a new book index (by date) for those interested in catching up on all our recent titles.

This past week’s set of LITS puzzles and one variation can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have a solving video for the last three puzzles in the week, starting with the Pirouette LITS by Prasanna Seshadri:

Friday’s Double LITS by Joseph Howard:

and another video for the Saturday LITS by wormsofcan:

This upcoming week, the last of 2020, will feature Fillomino puzzles. We’ll then be taking some time to identify our “Best of 2020” puzzles and will probably use a new voting format this year due to some of the issues with our solving widget. We’ll also have some news for our 2021 plans including what we’ll be doing for online solving next year.

Our next planned e-book will be Star Battle by JinHoo Ahn. We’re putting the finishing touches on it now, and should be posting it this week. So if you enjoyed the most recent week of Star Battle puzzles, please check out this title when it launches.

Last week’s mix of Star Battle puzzles and variations can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have a solving video for the Friday Star Wars variation by JinHoo Ahn:

and another video for the Saturday Star Battle by Thomas Snyder:

This upcoming week will feature LITS puzzles.

Later today we’ll be sharing a (very hard) sample puzzle from a Killer Sudoku puzzle pack from Serkan Yürekli, which was just added to our e-store. We are experimenting with different sizes for our puzzle titles; while this is a smaller puzzle pack than others, at just 27 puzzles, it is still full of a lot of brain-bending challenge at a $2 price. If you enjoyed the mental arithmetic in this recent Kakuro week, you will certainly enjoy the math and logic needed to get through these Killer Sudoku.

—

Our most recent mix of Kakuro puzzles and variations can be found in this PDF and the solutions are all grouped in this PDF and have also been linked to the individual posts.

We have a solving video for the Thursday Double Kakuro (Invisible) by Grant Fikes:

and another video for the Saturday Kakuro by Prasanna Seshadri:

This upcoming week will feature Star Battle puzzles.