I knew when constructing puzzles for this past week that it would end up pretty tough across the board. I had certain themes in mind and when constructing for a particular goal you cannot always tailor the timing precisely. I believe — except for Monday’s puzzle — everything was rated for at least 5 minutes. It is probably asking too much to expect a full week to “feel perfectly balanced” when there are six different styles being presented.

So, while it may be impossible to avoid “hard” weeks in the future, this did seem an apt time to return to discussing some of these puzzles. I got a specific request to describe Saturday’s Battleships in logical terms, so that is what I’ll cover today.

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A few weeks ago Giovanni P. asked what our visitors might think about “other puzzles.” His question was specific to word puzzles, but this week I put the question to the test when I posted our first “Puzzle Hunt” puzzle. The Monday puzzle was not announced as such. Instead it was meant to just look like an April Fools joke. But it already has the most FAVEs of any puzzle on the site. So what are “Puzzle Hunt” puzzles and what was really going on with that word search?

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Last week saw the release of Puzzlecraft: The Ultimate Guide on How to Construct Every Kind of Puzzle, a really incredible project with Mike Selinker that was an extension of our GAMES Magazine articles that have run for many years (I joined Mike around article #48 when he wanted to write on how to construct Battleships. I’ve been part of the process ever since as we now approach #100). The title seems overly broad, but I challenge anyone to come up with a puzzle style that isn’t covered in the book.

Last week also saw Mike and I finish construction on a book you’ll get to see next year, Tile Crosswords, a word puzzle style that we developed out of the logic puzzle “Crack-It-On” that first appeared at the WPC in Hungary in the late 90s. You might not picture me as someone who fills grids with letters that have a meaning when considered as intact strings, let alone then provides sets of letters outside the grid that also form strings that evoke the sets of letters that are in the grid — certainly if I write about making word grids and cluing them that way it would seem impossible that I even speak English — but it is something I’ve been increasingly finding joy in doing.

The reason I mention all this is to give you some forewarning that over the coming months we may have other puzzle types than just sudoku and abstract logic puzzles here. Just as with the Hidden Contest that ended last week, I intend Grandmaster Puzzles to have all the kinds of puzzles I would like to solve, but with a friendly mix of easy to hard and lots of different genres so that if today is not your cup of tea, then tomorrow probably is. You may only think of me as a logic puzzle constructor, but working with Mike over the last few years has really developed my puzzle-making chops in almost every area.

Whatever puzzles we release here, they should still be worthy in their genres of being called masterpieces.

Sincerely,
Dr. S

To [guess], or not to [guess], that is the question:

Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer

The [Twists] and [the Turns] of outrageous [Logic],

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,

And by [guessing] end them….

We’ve had a fair number of lively discussions in the last week, and if nothing else has come out of them at least the comment threading on the site is now noticeably improved. One question that has come up a lot has been around which puzzles need guesswork, here and elsewhere. A lot of solvers, for the sake of speed perhaps, will say they “had to bifurcate” during a solve here, but that has never been required for our puzzles. This week I wanted to (briefly) state my opinions on what I consider to be “logical” puzzles, since I mention frequently that all puzzles will have a single solution that can be reached by logic alone and it is worth contributors and solvers knowing what I mean by that.

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In addition to FoxFireX’s incredible sudoku gift that he made for someone’s birthday (some puzzles are meant to keep more private), we got three other submissions for our first Hidden Contest. We’re posting them here in increasing order of difficulty.

First up is an “Anti-Symmetry” Nurikabe from Giovanni P. where every clue that is odd/even has an even/odd clue in the corresponding symmetric place. Standard Nurikabe rules are all you need for this challenge.

Solution image

Next up is a real RARITY for this website, a Shakashaka. For the general rules, we’ll direct you to Nikoli.com where the puzzle originated. Here, Bryce Herdt has made a cipher version of the puzzle. The letters AIRTY each stand for a different number from 0 – 4 which the solver must determine.

Solution image

Finally, the hardest of the bunch, is an intriguing variation called “Sudoku Slitherlink” by its designer Scott Handelman. In addition to standard Slitherlink rules, a different number from 0-3 must go into each green cell. No number in a green cell can repeat in that row or column. As Scott warns, this is one of the hardest puzzles he’s constructed and, from his original post, he’s “still kinda shocked that the middle just kinda ‘works'”.

Solution image

All of these puzzles are grouped in this single PDF.

If you enjoy these puzzles, please comment here and say so, thanking each of the authors. As contest entries, these didn’t go through editorial review (except making sure there was a single answer), but we found them all quite interesting and worthy of being some of the first puzzles from other authors to appear on this web-site. We’re considering keeping Sunday open for “guest” submissions each week from new puzzle authors. And once we get through a stack of puzzle submissions for The Art of Puzzles, more authors will be appearing throughout the week too.

For the last couple weeks Sunday has been a day where we’ve seen a huge increase in page views, strictly because a new hint was released for the site’s first Hidden Contest. This led a few dedicated solvers to scour the site again looking for something out of place.

This Hidden Contest was an experiment in having “other” puzzle styles here; I’m a huge fan of puzzle hunts and secret codes and the like and was curious to see if my more observant solvers would catch onto something odd.

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I hope you enjoyed the first week with Grant Fikes contributing puzzles. Grant will be a regular author in the future, and has already sent in a lot of outstanding puzzles for The Art of Puzzles. While his best puzzles and his largest puzzles (sometimes one and the same) will be saved for that publication, a lot of fine leftovers will still end up here on a weekly basis. In other words, if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen here you’ll be amazed by what is in the book. Still, if you’d like to see some “Giants” from Grant, please check out the three he released last weekend 600 (LITS/”Tetra Firma”), 601 (Shakashaka/”Proof of Quilt”), and 602 (Norinori/”Dominnocuous”).

Who will our next Contributing Puzzlemaster be and when will his or her puzzles first appear? Only time will tell. For now I wanted to announce that the weekly release schedule will be going through a few changes. Since I have been publishing Sudoku and puzzles in five other genres (object placement, number placement, loops, shading, and region division), for most weeks going forward there will now be one puzzle in each of those six areas. Every other week will have a change in types (for example Masyu this week, Slitherlink the next) so there will be some balance in what gets posted. Over time, the genres will cycle through each day of the week so that easier and harder puzzles of all styles appear. That’s the basic plan, but there may be a few other surprises in store.

Finally, since a small number have been asking for more hints on the hidden contest (which remains undiscovered), and since I’ve not been responding privately for the sake of fairness, now seems a good time to narrow the hunt somewhat. While there have been a lot of posts here, from Doctor’s Notes to solving tutorials, this site is primarily about the puzzles. Somewhere in those 60 posts is what you need to find the “+1 puzzle” and possibly win a free book.

Regards, Dr. S.

PS: There will be no “Ask Dr. Sudoku” this week, but if you have any questions you would like answered in a future column, or past puzzles that have appeared here that were not covered that you would like some more insights on, this is the time to inquire. Going forward, I intend the “Asking” to be more active and cover just about anything (from puzzle that use baskets to NCAA tournament brackets). Solving/construction tutorials are interesting, but are not meant to be the only kind of topic.

Tenth in a series with puzzle solving tips. This time with advice on Fillomino puzzles and hidden polyominoes.

Fillomino is one of my favorite puzzle styles, in part because it is one of the few where I think the author’s touch can come across in the puzzle in so many different ways. In the set of Fillominoes I’ve gotten from different authors, I think I can pick out some authors from others just based on how much they use visual patterns, one-option polyomino growth, crowding, counting, how well they conceal hidden pentominoes, and so on. While having a variety of puzzle constructors will improve most sections of The Art of Puzzles, Fillomino is hands-down in my mind the one where having many authors will have the greatest effect on quality.

I wanted to talk about one of my own constructing trends which I learned this week after writing 7 Fillomino puzzles (only a few that went online; some are going to GAMES and others are being saved). That is what I’ll call the “known unknowns”. The picture you should have in your head when considering a choice based on the hidden polyominoes you’ll leave behind. The contradictions in the “known unknowns” are the basis for the Saturday Fillomino.

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When I originally was planning to launch the site, I had a 60+1 puzzle roll-out in mind. In this puzzle set, I would introduce many of my styles from the past, particularly sudoku, and also write a lot of styles I’m planning to publish in the future. All of those roll-out puzzles have now been released, even if I only have recorded solvers for the 60 announced puzzles and none so far for the +1. That “puzzle” is not at all hard to solve once you find it, but that’s the challenge!

I’d love to hear your feedback now that the full set is released on which were your favorite puzzle types or even your favorite puzzles, so I can consider how to focus going forward. Which type(s) that did not occur would you like to see in the future? The Art of Puzzles will feature challenges in five general genres: Number Placement (TomTom and Skyscrapers), Object Placement (Battleships and Star Battle), Shading (Nurikabe and Tapa), Region Division (Fillomino and Cave), and Loop (Masyu and Slitherlink). And — while this is commercially risky in many people’s minds — it will have no Sudoku puzzles at all. So over the coming weeks, there will be fewer (but not zero) sudoku puzzles on this site as the puzzle styles in The Art of Puzzles get even more focus. And there may finally be a few variations on puzzles, but I won’t be publishing variations until the sequel!

I’ve gotten some questions about how I can keep up with posting so many puzzles every week. Well, I plan to take a little time off now. I have not written any puzzles for this week. But I hope you still visit to solve the puzzles that are here that you might not yet have completed — or found — and anything else that might pop up too. This is the end of the beginning, but the next chapter will be even more incredible.

Ninth in a series with puzzle solving tips. This time with advice on Slitherlink and loop puzzles in general.

Even if you had a good time on the TIME Slitherlink, the following walk-through might offer you some new tips — besides just memorizing Slitherlink patterns — to get better at loop puzzles.

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