Because of the mainstream popularity of Sudoku (née Number Place) and its variations, we’ve kept Sudoku separate from the rest of the Number Placement category historically. But due to this split, both Sudoku and Number Placement are our smallest categories, each with 34 entries this year. Today we are announcing our best Number Placement puzzles of 2014:

TomTom puzzles add some math onto the Latin Square frame familiar from Sudoku, and one of our Toms wrote the best classic TomTom of the year. This “Count-Up” puzzle from Tom Collyer started the year off well:

Skyscrapers is our other major Number Placement genre at the moment. This Sums Skyscraper by Thomas Snyder, “Going Up?”, received a lot of faves. Is there something to puzzles with “up” themes getting highly rated this year?

We’ve only posted one Ripple Effect puzzle on this site, but it was a rare gem from Grant Fikes and very highly rated.

Our two best number placement puzzles were both “new” TomTom variations. John Bulten, a guest contributor to GMPuzzles, came up with a rather original “clueless” TomTom:

In the end, the highest rated Number Placement puzzle (and one of three puzzles that tied for FAVES for Puzzle of the Year) was the TomTomTom by Thomas Snyder, his 200th contribution for the site:

(View image directly for larger form)

All of the Best Number Placement puzzles of 2014 are collected in this PDF.

There will be no new puzzles this week as we look back on the last 51 weeks (and 326 puzzle posts) at GMPuzzles. Over the next six days we will be presenting our “Best of 2014″ selections, using data from the FAVE button at the bottom of each post. Because of a variable number of solvers over the year (and even over each week), the selection process included raw FAVE counts, FAVE/solver ratios, and internal discussions when those values brought up ties. Today, we present the BEST SUDOKU:

While we had fewer sudoku than last year due to a wider variety of puzzles, the sudoku we posted still received rather high ranks.

The best Classic sudoku from last year was Flyers by Thomas Snyder (aka Dr. Sudoku), a hand-crafted sudoku where getting just one digit is quite a challenge:

Thermo-Sudoku is a frequent variant here and this “June Sun” puzzle also by Dr. Sudoku was the highest rated standard variant:

This combination of Thermo-Sudoku and Skyscrapers from Hans van Stippent, with zero given numbers, earned a very high ratio of FAVEs from its solvers:

2014 brought a new contributing puzzlemaster to the website, and Prasanna Seshadri’s sudoku contributions frequently rose to the top of the charts. As a new variation, this “Hamle Sudoku” was very highly rated:

Overall, the highest marks went to another puzzle from Prasanna, one that I both rejected and accepted. Originally created for Prasanna’s Sudoku GP round in 2014, this Basement Skyscraper Sudoku puzzle had to be cut from that competition for reasons of time/difficulty and for having a higher emphasis on Skyscrapers (a puzzle genre) and not just Sudoku. Fortunately, this “reject” got a chance to shine on our website as a really elegant puzzle, and our Best Sudoku of 2014:

All of these best sudoku can be found in this PDF.

Please come back later today for the first in our “Best of 2014” entries. Our supercomputers (read: Thomas, working with a spreadsheet and some graphs) are crunching the numbers as we speak to bring you this exciting summary of the last year at Grandmaster Puzzles.

All the Pentomino puzzles from last week can be found in this PDF.

Instead of new puzzles, this coming week will highlight our best rated puzzles of 2014. Have you liked what GMPuzzles has offered over 2014? How do you want to see our site grow over the next year?

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

This next week will feature a set of Pentomino puzzles, specifically Pentominous and Pentopia puzzles.

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

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

This next week will feature another variety mix. The puzzles will be:
Monday: Tapa by Thomas Snyder
Tuesday: Masyu by Grant Fikes
Wednesday: Battleships by Thomas Snyder
Thursday: TomTom by Grant Fikes
Friday: Arrow Sudoku by Swaroop Guggilam
Saturday: Star Duel by Carl Worth

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will also be a Cross the Streams by Prasanna Seshadri.

All the Fillomino puzzles from last week can be found in this PDF.

This next week will feature a variety mix, all from Grant Fikes. Specifically, we will have:
Monday: Slitherlink
Tuesday: Cave
Wednesday: Round Trip
Thursday: Skyscrapers
Friday: Fillomino
Saturday: Cross the Streams (LITS)

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

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

This next week will feature a set of classic puzzles and variations on Fillomino. Puzzles will be from Hans van Stippent, Grant Fikes, Prasanna Seshadri, and Robert Vollmert.

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

All the puzzles from last week’s Letters and Numbers (Pentominous/Sudoku) collection can be found in this PDF.

This next week will feature a variety of styles from guest contributors. Specifically:
Monday: Nanro by Carl Worth
Tuesday: Round Trip by Hans van Stippent
Wednesday: Masyu by Murat Can Tonta
Thursday: Tapa by John Bulten
Friday: Cave by Murat Can Tonta
Saturday: Fractional Skyscrapers by Robert Vollmert

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

All the puzzles from last week’s Castle Wall collection can be found in this PDF.

We had 57 solvers for Dr. Sudoku’s 200th puzzle contest. Two random numbers were selected from 1-57 using random.org marking solvers 30 and 52 as the winners of a free puzzle book. Those lucky solvers are (30.) Projectyl and (52.) phlebowitsh.

For anyone who was stumped by the lack of rules for the TomTomTom, and didn’t catch on to the hint provided by the title, here are complete rules. The six 6×6 grids make up a Latin Cube where no digit repeats in any row or column within a grid, or within any cell in the same position across the grids (i.e., stack the grids on top of each other and no digit repeats within a position in that stack). While none of the starting grids have a unique solution without the Latin Cube constraint, with this constraint all five regular looking TomToms can now be uniquely solved. Use the remaining digits in each location to fill in the last grid. Assign number values to those cases keeping in mind operations when present and convert 1=A, 2=B, …, to read out the solution in left-to-right, top-to-bottom order.”

This next week will feature both letters and numbers. Specifically, a set of Pentominous puzzles by Grant Fikes and Sudoku puzzles by Thomas Snyder. The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will also be a Pentominous by Grant Fikes.