All the puzzles from the antisymmetry-themed variety week can be found in this PDF.

We’ve been engaging in some new sudoku projects over the last half year; specifically, Grandmaster Puzzles has been supplying hand-crafted sudoku variations to a new magazine called “Will Shortz’s Sudoku”. While the first issue just hit bookstores and newstands, we’ve now completed submissions for three issues. Our Tight Fit Sudoku, Thermo-Sudoku, Arrow Sudoku, Even/Odd Sudoku, Consecutive Sudoku, and Isodoku (nine puzzles from each genre per issue) sit alongside more typical sudoku offerings from Penny Publications.

This next week I wanted to bring together some of the “extra” submissions I’ve gotten in from our authors for that magazine, with two sudoku in each of these styles: Tight Fit, Thermo-Sudoku, and Arrow Sudoku

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Star Battle by Thomas Snyder.

All the puzzles from last week’s Balance Loop/Fillomino mix can be found in this PDF.

Next week we’ll have a variety week, but with a common theme throughout all the puzzles. The exact schedule is this:
Monday: Masyu by Tom Collyer
Tuesday: Nanro by Grant Fikes
Wednesday: Tapa by Tapio Saarinen
Thursday: Cave by Thomas Snyder
Friday: Balance Loop by Prasanna Seshadri
Saturday: Statue Park by Palmer Mebane

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Skyscrapers by Thomas Snyder.

All the hexagonal puzzle variations from last week can be found in this PDF.

Next week will feature a combination of something old (Fillomino by Grant Fikes) and something new (Balance Loop by Prasanna Seshadri).

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Cave by Grant Fikes.

All the puzzles from last week’s Number Placement mix can be found in this PDF.

Next week we’ll have a variety week, but with a twist. All the puzzles will be on hexagonal grids.
The exact schedule is this:
Monday: Hex Kakuro by Serkan Yürekli
Tuesday: Hex Tapa by Prasanna Seshadri
Wednesday: Hex Nanro by Prasanna Seshadri
Thursday: SLICY (aka Hex LITS) by Thomas Snyder
Friday: Hex Masyu by Serkan Yürekli
Saturday: Hex Kakuro by Serkan Yürekli

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Magic Fence by Serkan Yürekli.

All the puzzles from last week’s variety mix can be found in this PDF.

Next week we’ll be focusing on two different puzzles: Even/Odd Sudoku by Thomas Snyder and Top Heavy Number Place by Serkan Yürekli

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Fillomino by Grant Fikes.

All the Tapa puzzles and variations from last week can be found in this PDF.

After last week’s extra hard puzzles, we have a slightly easier than normal variety week coming up. The specific styles will be these:

Monday: Masyu by Tom Collyer
Tuesday: Tight Fit Sudoku (Variation) by Serkan Yürekli
Wednesday: Star Battle by Carl Worth
Thursdays: Nanro by Grant Fikes
Friday: Fillomino by Palmer Mebane
Saturday: TomTom by Grant Fikes

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a LITS by Grant Fikes.

All the variety puzzles from the first week of 2015 can be found in this PDF.

This next week will be a little harder than usual, with a lot of interesting Tapa puzzles and variations. Puzzles will be by Prasanna Seshadri, Serkan Yürekli, Tapio Saarinen, and Murat Can Tonta.

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Tapa (Borders) by Serkan Yürekli.

The advertised “stats” update for 2014 will be coming later, but I did want to follow up on several requests from readers for the new year.

– I’ve already posted about our site navigation changes for 2015 but I wanted to mention again the new sidebar/”posts by category” and “posts by author” bits and make sure solvers are finding this to be an improvement.

– We received many requests for a way to distinguish the PDF files in a week as they sometimes get mixed after printing; we’re now adding the posting date to the top of all PDFs in 2015 which should help track things better.

– The biggest open ticket to address is a way to track the puzzles you’ve solved. Here I have to rely on our web developer at the moment so I can’t promise you any timeline, but I hear the request loud and clear. We’ll work through the challenges of merging the solving data with a representative calendar of our site posts and have something available as soon as possible.

– We’ll be adding some new puzzlemasters this year, but I won’t tell you who or when yet. That will be a surprise.

– Also on the horizon for early this year are some improvements to our estore, including more titles there (that only our patrons have seen), and a new header for the blog.

Now that we are doing so many things with daily puzzles and monthly ebooks and other collections, it is time to bring on some more freelancers to help with the site and with our books. There are projects that simply cannot move fast enough because I don’t have the time to complete them myself. Our most pressing need is for an artist that can create covers for our book collections. We’re looking for clean, professional art that showcases how special our puzzles are, with our The Art of Sudoku cover being a prime example. If you think you might be the person to help us with that, please contact us.

I will eventually have a longer write-up with some stats from 2014 and other updates here (probably next weekend). Until then, I hope you enjoyed our look back at our Best Puzzles of 2014 and are excited for the start of new puzzles again tomorrow. This coming week will have a variety mix, including several with a familiar theme for this time of year:

Monday: Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri
Tuesday: Cave (Product) by Grant Fikes
Wednesday: Slitherlink by Grant Fikes
Thursdays: Skyscrapers (Sum) by Thomas Snyder
Friday: Pentopia by Grant Fikes
Saturday: Battleships by Thomas Snyder

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will also be a Pentominous by Grant Fikes.

With new styles Nanro and Kurotto joining Tapa, Nurikabe, Cross the Streams, and LITS this year, shading puzzles are now by far the most common style of puzzle we post at Grandmaster Puzzles (86 total posts in 2014). As a result, we’re going to give out a few more awards for the Best Shading puzzles than in the other categories.

Half of our “April Fool’s” week puzzles got very high ratings, including this Nanro from Prasanna Seshadri:

This LITS puzzle from Palmer Mebane also received a lot of praise for a simple but elegant solving theme:

Tapa continues to be one of our most popular puzzle styles, both in regular form or as a variation. We had three highly rated “best” Tapa puzzles this year. Amazingly, they all ended up using the same general theme. Will Shortz sometimes remarks that “As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.” Well, our favorite Tapa all featured impressive empty spaces that solvers would need to fill. Starting the year was this Tapa Triomino variation by Prasanna Seshadri called “Open Middle”:

Then in May came “Open Spaces” by Murat Can Tonta:

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Then in October, perhaps inspired by what came before, John Bulten provided “White Hole”:

While really a hybrid of a shading puzzle and a loop puzzle, Serkan Yürekli’s Nurikabe Loop “The Magic of 23” had the magic to make this list:

(View image directly for larger form)

Finally, we had some noteworthy Cross the Streams puzzles. Murat Can Tonta used a lot of just four basic clues in this masterpiece:

But the best Shading puzzle, and the last of the puzzles tied for Puzzle of the Year (with the TomTomTom, and the C Major Cipher Fillomino) was Grant Fikes’ audiobook form of a Cross the Streams puzzle. There isn’t really a puzzle to show here, just an MP3 link for you to hear.

All of the Best Shading puzzles for 2014 have been gathered in this PDF.