Our latest “Smashing the Sudoku” video covering the hard Nurikabe and Tight Fit puzzles from last week is now online.
After some extreme weather that caused power outages and then some other challenges, we’re back on track to get through our January tasks including announcing the Best of 2022 puzzles and releasing some bonus Microsoft Puzzle Hunt content. Keep a watch here for those updates and also for the start of discussing our 2023+ plans for the site in the coming weeks.
(Copying a message below after a day where I’ve felt better than any time in the last 5 years having made a hard life decision. If I haven’t seen you in awhile or written in awhile, this is my commitment this year to share the love with my closest network, to detoxify myself and then to reconnect with my 1000 strongest connections to then see what we can do together on the problems we don’t even know to identify yet. The spark came from thinking about my move to 2014, the story of me ending my (f)unemployment from puzzles and relearning my love of science. It was a letter to Chad. I’ll not share his response unless he agrees, but I want you to know what I’m saying to my close network of people. Writing letters as with a postage stamp may not be a scalable thing to do, but I don’t care right now as it is a great way to share clear thoughts.)
Dear Chad,
There are not enough words (certainly not these 500+) that can say how much I appreciated your love last year, hearing your family connection to mental health while going through a challenging 2022 myself.
You might have seen Verily’s reduction in workforce news. Wednesday was a tough day for me after an exhausting JPM week. I drove to my college alma mater today and cleared my head and feel quite different. It’s added up to the decision in the header, I am taking a sabbatical from full-time work in 2023. I want to slow down parts of my life so that I can speed up my thinking. I want to help change the world, to coach the teams that might be able to.
My first innovative decision is to try life without a cell phone for this year, and connect back with the people I love. I may write a scientific paper after 12 months about the experience on my mental health and on others — I have lots of good measures and I am a data scientist so there could be a story there. Having gone through DBT therapy and being observant has made me recognize even just watching the homeless and mentally ill, or trying to talk to them and seeing how often I can get through — those observations from a person like me could make a difference. I think my main research goal might become tackling mental illness, but January is just about reading non-science books and trying other things.
So to keep me accountable — that this is a sabbatical and not a retirement — I commit this year, every couple months, to write you some thoughtful notes, with no rush for you to respond back (consider it a long letter sent with a postage stamp). I will be visiting different places sometime and I would love to get a set-up like a $1 and 0 equity advisor role just so I can have a badge back if I find myself in Seattle and want a place to sit and do some thinking and don’t need to send any emails to have an open door and a hotel desk. I don’t have an admin, I don’t want an admin. I want an open door like I loved having when I was at google so I could see a foreign city and get a quick snack before heading to an airport if needed. When it is a longer stay, we should certainly arrange an invited talk, a chance for lunch or other connection with you and Harlan.
I have strong connections in 10+ cities, but yours is the only one I want to start with for Seattle, because just talking about immunosequencing with some of its pioneers may revive what I felt in 2014, a time I consider one of the most stimulating in my life as I had access to all your data and to Tableau and could just play. I want my 1-2 day experiments to be things I can share anywhere, and we’ll discuss how this might be possible later. My message today was to just say I made a decision for me and am off the market but also not working anywhere deliberately. I’m going to celebrate my 43rd birthday next Thursday by being with my best friend, their partner, and child, in Boston who I haven’t seen enough since they moved away from SF during my post-hospitalization therapy.
I know we’re not genetically related, but I consider you a dear part of my family — I only use the term for closest connections and mentors/mentees in both directions. I do hope that you are managing these tough times. No rush to respond, but I look forward to a pleasant surprise in my inbox within the next 12 months. And I’ll stand by my commitment to write when I want to share a connection and fun life experience and maybe a new idea where something is connecting in a bigger picture I want to form.
With love,
Thomas
(I was intending to start some more 2023 planning thoughts here today including a bonus sudoku, but I haven’t had power at my home due to recent weather since last night. For now, enjoy the first Smashing the Sudoku I released yesterday on YouTube.)
(Update Jan 9, 2023 morning: I did get power restored last night, but effectively lost a lot of momentum on this project while I worked on others. So we’ll start again next weekend, life permitting; stay well!)
A ten-year update to our first puzzle post ever.
Solve our logo puzzle online by clicking here or download this PDF to solve offline (go back to the original post for solution tracking).
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A few stats for our past decade of puzzles:
Longer form thoughts follow, including some introspection:
(more…)
While we are still closing out 2022 here on the west coast of the US, we wanted to wish a Happy New Year to those already in 2023 and those who soon will be.
We’re closing out the year on a great note with the release of our Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6, with 60 puzzles across Sudoku, Kakuro, Parking Lot, Nanro, Snake Pit, and Round Trip styles. This is our 17th collection published in a busy 2022, and you can see all the books listed by release date here or can search for favorite puzzle types in our e-store directly.
Our latest book, Loop Variety Collection 2, is now posted in our e-store.
We’re also putting the finishing touches on Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6 now, and our most recent week on puzzles taken from the styles in that GPQ6 book is gathered in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF.
The puzzle solution videos are on the posts and linked below.
We’re done with posting puzzles for this year, and will be sharing some updates about what is to come in 2023 soon.
Our most recent week Loop Variety puzzle week is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. Our new book Loop Variety Collection 2, with more Geradeweg, Mukkonn Enn, Yajilin (Regional), Equality, and Line of Sight puzzles, will be released in the few days at our e-store. Until then, you can find the first volume which has more Country Road alongside other puzzles here.
The puzzle solution videos, including our first from a guest contributor Martin Ender for the Friday Country Road, are on the posts and linked below.
We will have a Sunday Stumper posting in five minutes. This coming week, our last of new puzzles for 2022, will feature puzzles (and variations) that will be part of the sixth volume of our Grandmaster Puzzle Quarterly series which will also be released this month.
Tomorrow marks an important anniversary for Grandmaster Puzzles. On 12/12/12 at 12:12:12 PM (PT) I emailed out my first business plan/organizing documents to the original group of GMPuzzles team members. A few weeks later marked the first blog posts on the site, as well as a new journey in my life as I’d just made a hard decision to leave a science role/project I’d been working on for several years and relocated to Seattle, aiming to rediscover my goals in life starting with Grandmaster Puzzles.
A lot has changed in the time since. For GMPuzzles, this includes a much larger group of contributing puzzlemasters and other authors, Serkan becoming my partner in GMPuzzles as managing editor, regular YouTube solving videos, and digital solving options via Penpa-Edit for all new web posts and some of our books. Professionally and personally, I’ve also gone through a lot from (f)unemployment for a year in 2013 to growing responsibilities as a scientist and team leader, moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area, all while still supporting GMPuzzles through time and money.
Throughout these years though nothing has changed in our mission to bring you “hand-crafted logic puzzles, by the best puzzle designers, for all who love puzzles”. We’ve posted over 2,600 free web puzzles, released over 55 books/collections including several thousand more original puzzles, and never published a “broken” puzzle with an error in the puzzle art, even if I’ve caused a fair share of typos on our posts through the years.
A lot of thoughts come to mind thinking back through this GMPuzzles journey to date, and we’ll be writing more as we hit the end of the year about what are plans are for 2023 and beyond. We expect to make some changes (doing more of some things, less of others) as we update our business plan and explore other new paths to get revenue by supporting other puzzle projects and competitions. For now, let me share my thanks with everyone on the GMPuzzles team, everyone who has ever submitted a puzzle, and you the audience for solving our puzzles and adding your comments to the website. This community of puzzlers has been great to see come together, to support each other including me through some tough times. I’m excited for what comes next.
If you’ve enjoyed our web content, please continue to support the site by sharing gmpuzzles with your friends, by buying some of our books or by making a donation using the button in the menu to the left to give back to our puzzle authors.
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Zooming back to the regular content, our most recent week of puzzles to highlight the “Starter Pack” series is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can find all of our Starter Pack books in our e-store, and the 6th volume of “Jigsaw Sudoku” will be released in 2023.
The daily puzzle “talkthrough” videos are on the posts and linked below.
Like this most recent week, our last two weeks of the year will focus on upcoming books starting with the “Loop Variety Collection 2” where we will have some less common loop styles this week including some from the genres in that collection. We’ll also have an unusual Sunday Stumper in one week. Our last week of blog puzzles will then focus on styles from Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 6 as we close out ten years of puzzles.
Our most recent week of Nanro puzzles is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can find more Nanro puzzles in our e-store.
The daily puzzle “talkthrough” videos are on the posts and linked below.
Our next week of puzzles looks back at our Starter Pack series, with a new puzzle in each of the styles from the first five books, and then has a Jigsaw Sudoku from me as a teaser for volume 6 that is still being worked on.
Our most recent week of Sudoku puzzles and variations is collected together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can find more Sudoku puzzles in our e-store.
The daily “speed solve + talkthrough” videos are on the posts and linked below.
Our next week of puzzles features Nanro puzzles including three variations.