Today we’re excited to announce the release of the new book Tapa and Variations 3, co-authored by Zoltán Horváth and Serkan Yürekli. It features 20 classic Tapa puzzles (including one giant grid) as well as 4 puzzles in each of 9 variations for 56 Tapa in total. This book follows our release about a month ago of Starter Pack 2: Tapa which is a good way for a beginner to get into Tapa where Tapa and Variations 3 has some very challenging puzzles.

To mark the release of the new book, Serkan wrote a bonus “Tapa Sudoku” puzzle for the Cracking the Cryptic channel which you solve find here, as well as watching a solving explanation from Simon Anthony from his own experience with the puzzle as well as seeing me go through it.

Our previous week of Tapa puzzles is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Tapa puzzles can be found in these books in our store. All of our books including the ones mentioned above feature original puzzles (not from the website), and buying these books is a great way to support the site while getting more fun logical challenges to solve.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

Our next week of puzzles features hexagonal grids, with six different styles taken to a new logical shape by changing the grid behavior.

Our previous week of Skyscrapers puzzles is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Skyscrapers can be found in these books in our store. All of our books feature original puzzles (not from the website), and buying these books is a great way to support the site while getting more fun logical challenges to solve.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

Our next week of puzzles features Tapa puzzles and variations, and will also mark the release of Tapa and Variations 3, a new e-book from Zoltán Horváth and Serkan Yürekli that will be released next weekend.

Our previous week of Sudoku puzzles is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Sudoku puzzles can be found in these books in our store. All of our books feature original puzzles (not from the website), and buying these books is a great way to support the site while getting more fun logical challenges to solve.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

Our next week of puzzles features Skyscrapers puzzles, and in a few minutes we will have a Sunday Stumper from Jonas Gleim, an Arrow Sudoku / Thermo-Sudoku hybrid.

Our previous week of Slitherlink puzzles is gathered together in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Slitherlink puzzles can be found in these books in our store. All of our books feature original puzzles (not from the website), and buying these books is a great way to support the site while getting more fun logical challenges to solve.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

Our next week of puzzles features four classic Sudoku and two variations. We’ll also have an interesting Arrow Sudoku / Thermo-Sudoku hybrid for a Sunday Stumper in seven days.

We’ve just published our third volume of the Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly series. This title contains sixty puzzles across these genres: Thermo-Sudoku, Skyscrapers, Battleships, Cross the Streams, Kuromasu, and Balance Loop. Go to the link above to purchase the book PDF file. This marks two books released in two weeks after our Starter Pack 2: Tapa title was launched last Sunday.

Our past week of “Starter Pack” Variety puzzles is in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More easy puzzles for people learning new puzzles can be found in our store.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

Our next week of puzzles features Slitherlink and variations, which will also be a theme for an upcoming puzzle book later this spring.

We’ve just published our second Starter Pack, this one by Serkan Yürekli features 30 easy-to-medium Tapa puzzles for solvers getting started with this shading puzzle style. There is a page with penpa-edit links for all thirty puzzles for solvers that want to try these Tapa puzzles out online. Our upcoming week of puzzles will feature six puzzles with “starter pack” type difficulty from six different genres including Tapa.

Our past week of Cave puzzles is in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Cave puzzles can be found in our store.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

Our past week of Statue Park puzzles is in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Statue Park puzzles can be found in our store.

Our Statue Park week closes with a Sunday Stumper posting in a few minutes.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

We’ve been adding more Penpa-Edit links this weekend, and all Slitherlink and Masyu posts are now digitized (except for one irregular USA Slitherlink). We’ll be working on Skyscrapers posts next as we get much closer to having Penpa-Edit links for nearly all of our old puzzles.

The next week of puzzles will feature Cave puzzles with several classic puzzles and a few variations. We’re also about a week away from publishing our second Starter Pack, with this next issue by Serkan Yürekli focused on Tapa.

Hi all,

I wanted to share some updates and other thoughts about our solving videos.

1) We have historically released the videos one day after the puzzles are released and still think this is the most rewarding approach so the earliest solvers can’t get help right away on a tough challenge. But we have been putting the updated links on the original posts the next day which make them hard to schedule and requires daily site maintenance. We will now instead be posting the solutions on the following day’s puzzle, but with quick links to those posts for people in the future to find.

2) Also, we are starting to get some other people making these solving videos and not just me. Yes, they will need some (helpful) feedback about microphones and clarity of words and pace of speech and other things, so please be constructive in your comments and not just complain. We’re all trying to share the language of puzzles and even if the words fail to be perfect in a video, the visual images should be enough to help guide you on where to look and potentially how to think to get to the next steps. That the language of a logic puzzle does not need any “English” is what excites me so much in communicating through puzzles.

3) Finally, if you are interested yourself to eventually become a presenter of solution videos for GMPuzzles, please feel free to reach out here. One great way to officially “apply” for this kind of job is to film a video for any of our puzzles that currently don’t have one. If they are good enough, we’ll add that video to our official post and channel and may consider adding you to the GMPuzzles team to do these videos more regularly. There are a lot of others using twitch or YouTube to make solution videos so the standards already out there, people using OBS or other streaming tools to make videos, is our starting point. Not where I was at in 2014 when I made the first video with just a cell phone camera and shaky video and bad lighting. I’ve enjoyed learning how to make more compelling videos without needing an editor and expect some of you might as well so I’m here to help.

Cheers,
Thomas

First, thanks again for all your thoughts and words of love as I’ve been working through my mental health (see past post here). I continue to feel better, but have been very disconnected from work and taking long hikes and walks and talking with friends and taking medication so I should be getting better. I don’t know if I’ve stabilized, but I did begin to apply the scientific method to analyse my breakdown and share it with the world and if you are struggling with things there may be some interesting ideas in this long video.

Our past week of Kakuro puzzles is in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Kakuro puzzles can be found in these books in our store.

The daily solution videos are on the posts and linked below:

The next week of puzzles will feature Statue Park puzzles with several great classic puzzles and a few variations. There will also be a challenging Sunday Stumper a week from today.

We just uploaded a new version of Penpa-Edit tools to the site. The major update with this version is the presence of solve histories which you can also share with others using the “share” button and then “Replay URL” choice. Here is an example link of me doing the Monday Kakuro puzzle. In Solve Path mode it will go through one entry step at a time and at uniform speed. In Live Replay mode, provided you had the clock on, it will show the exact timing of all entries and make the long thinking moments more obvious too. We’re still exploring this feature and don’t yet have an intention to have this replace our solving videos but think the ability to store and share your own solving paths will be neat.

There were also some minor fixes and other improvements that were part of this update. Please share any thought/feedback here as you begin to use the latest version of Penpa-Edit.