Schedule for Next Week
Last week’s small collection of puzzles from Grant Fikes is here in this PDF.
John Bulten takes on the authorship role for the puzzles this week, including:
Tuesday: Masyu
Thursday: Nurikabe
Saturday: Star Battle
Last week’s small collection of puzzles from Grant Fikes is here in this PDF.
John Bulten takes on the authorship role for the puzzles this week, including:
Tuesday: Masyu
Thursday: Nurikabe
Saturday: Star Battle
The last batch of puzzles is collected in this PDF.
For the next few weeks we’ll have small sets from some of our puzzle masters. Up first is a Grant Fikes week:
Tuesday: LITS
Thursday: Pentominous
Saturday: Cross the Streams
We’re going to try to slowly restart posting puzzles here. For awhile, this will mean 3 puzzles a week until other backlogged and delayed tasks are completed for the site including an expansion of our e-book store.
In addition to Serkan’s surprise posted this morning, you can expect to see these puzzles over the next two weeks:
6/30: Slitherlink by Grant Fikes
7/2: Skyscrapers by Prasanna Seshadri
7/4: Fillomino by Grant Fikes
7/7: Star Battle by Grant Fikes
7/9: Cave by John Bulten
7/11: Killer Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli
People looking for new puzzles from me should check out next weekend’s Puzzle Grand Prix. Many USPC contributors (and therefore many GMPuzzles contributors) have written puzzles. I’ve made LITS and Shape Minesweeper sections; Serkan Yürekli has made some Kakuro; Roger Barkan (author of the Colossal Cave Collection) has made some Caves.
There are still no solvers of the Hidden Contest.
I continue working through my transition; while I’ve been at my new job for a month, I only just found my permanent residence in CA for this year and will move in next weekend. Still a lot to do before I see the time returning to do much with GMPuzzles.
We’ve extended the hidden contest for at least two more weeks and added another hint for it.
Besides this hidden contest, there will likely be no new puzzles on the site until May, and a return to a regular schedule will probably still be some time after that. I’ll be using some of this time to close out lots of things that have been pushed back because of the demands of meeting a weekly posting schedule, including the print edition of The Art of Puzzles, the print and electronic editions of The Art of Puzzles 2: Double Trouble, as well as the #1 Fans puzzle promised to our patrons long ago. Thanks again for your patience.
I wanted to share some life/site news with you all. Tomorrow I’m starting a new job at Google with their Life Sciences team. I just drove back to California for this unique opportunity, but I am quite far from being settled in.
As a result of this life change, I’m going to be taking an indefinite break from posting regular puzzles here. There may be a few random puzzles posted during this gap, but this past week was the last full week for awhile.
In the interim, there is still an open contest to solve (with a new hint).
And for most of you, there are still hundreds of past puzzles to look through. I’ve made a new archive page where you can readily download everything we’ve posted.
— Dr. S.
We hope you enjoyed all John’s puzzles from last week, which are fully contained in this PDF. If you solved the complete set, Grandmaster Puzzles would like to reward you with a copy of the seminal reference “A Dictionary of 4,573 Crucial Cross Words and their Clues”, coauthored by John Bulten. This out-of-print 1987 work was the first crossword dictionary we know of to rank words using the methodology now standard for “The New York Times”. All copies will be personally signed by J.B.!
To obtain your copy, simply enter the proper product code (read: the answer to the hidden puzzle) in the applet below before midnight, April 19th (three weeks from today) May 3rd May 17th, so that we can verify your address via email. Solvers will also be recognized in a later post.
As with our first Hidden Contest, this is a challenge of logic and observation. We’ll be adding hints here each week until the close of the entry period.
Hint 1 (4/5/2015): It’s all good, but I recommend 138956247.
Hint 2 (4/12/2015): To obtain the product code, simply follow the correct instructions in the correct order. A review of other puzzlemaster debut weeks may help out.
Hint 3 (4/19/2015): Following the example of other puzzlemasters here, John tried to leave his mark on these puzzles. After finding out what that means, you are looking for an answer with one word followed by several numbers.
(4/26/2015): No extra hint today, but we’re sharing the official solution packet for the week’s puzzles which may be useful.
Hint 4 (5/3/2015): You are looking for a single element in common across all of the puzzles. It may be easiest to find this by looking at the solutions that include shading (BACA, Slithersweeper, and Tapa).
Next week will be a regular variety mix with puzzles from six authors.
All the puzzles from Tom and Prasanna’s variety week can be found in this PDF.
This next week will be somewhat different and also somewhat challenging. But first, an announcement:
With great pleasure I welcome John Bulten to Grandmaster Puzzles as a new Contributing Puzzlemaster. I haven’t added a new Contributing Puzzlemaster in over a year, and John may be a new name for some of you, but after I ran into amazing puzzle after amazing puzzle in his submissions for our upcoming title The Art of Puzzles 2 I know he would be a great addition to our team.
John is an accomplished cruciverbalist as well as a logic puzzle designer. He’s been published in many places including “Will Shortz’s Wordplay” and “GAMES” (now “GAMES World of Puzzles”). He will regale us with puzzles that often require unique verbal logic as part of our 2015 goal to publish more letter- and word-based puzzles and themes. This week features puzzle overlaps where different styles work together:
Monday: BACA (Easy as ABC/Paint by Numbers)
Tuesday: Litro (LITS/Nanro)
Wednesday: Slithersweeper (Double Minesweeper/Slitherlink)
Thursday: Symmetry Fillomino (Fillomino/Spiral Galaxies)
Friday: Pentapa (Tapa/Pentomino Placement)
Saturday: Hidden Shape Sudoku (Shape Sudoku/Battleship Sudoku)
The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Cavestream (Cave/Cross the Streams) by John Bulten.
All the puzzles from the recent Guest Contributors week can be found in this PDF.
Next week we’ll have a variety week combining puzzles from Tom Collyer and Prasanna Seshadri:
Monday: Tapa by Prasanna Seshadri
Tuesday: Nurikabe by Tom Collyer
Wednesday: Slitherlink by Prasanna Seshadri
Thursday: Star Battle by Tom Collyer
Friday: Pointer Sums Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri
Saturday: Skyscrapers by Tom Collyer
The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Cave by Thomas Snyder.
All the puzzles from the recent Loop week can be found in this PDF.
Next week we’ll have a variety week, just from guest contributors that send their ideas to us here at GMPuzzles. The exact schedule is this:
Monday: Nurikabe by Tapio Saarinen
Tuesday: Fillomino by Murat Can Tonta
Wednesday: Masyu (Deformable) by Murat Can Tonta
Thursday: Pentopia by Carl Worth
Friday: Pentopia by Carl Worth
Saturday: 2D Top Heavy Number Place by James McGowan
The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Cross the Streams by Grant Fikes.