Our last variety mix week is collected in this PDF.

This coming week features TomTom puzzles and will also mark the 300th web post by Thomas Snyder with a special challenge on Saturday.

Master+ subscribers to the site are getting two more TomToms from Thomas Snyder and Murat Can Tonta as well as images of the puzzle solutions. If you want to become a subscriber and get access to bonus puzzles, solutions, e-books, and other rewards, check out this page.

This coming week is a variety mix across all of our genres (sudoku, number placement, object placement, loop/path, region division, shading) featuring puzzles from eight of our puzzlemasters (two puzzles only available to subscribers).

Master+ subscribers to the site are also getting a video walkthrough of the Wednesday puzzle as well as puzzle solutions. If you want to become a subscriber and get access to bonus puzzles, solutions, e-books, and other rewards, check out this page.

You can find our most recent week featuring Slitherlink in this PDF.

This coming week features an object placement puzzle style: Star Battle, with five classic puzzles and one variation.

This week, Master+ subscribers to the site are also getting two bonus puzzles: an easy Star Battle by John Bulten and a hard Star Battle by Serkan Yürekli, as well as puzzle solutions. If you want to become a subscriber and get access to bonus puzzles, solutions, e-books, and other rewards, check out this page.

You can find our first week of puzzles for 2018, a hard variety mix by guest Joseph Howard, in this PDF.

This year we will more regularly post weeks that focus on one puzzle style (with 4-5 classic puzzles and 1-2 variations of the style) with a complete range of very easy to hard puzzles. For our next week the focus will be on Slitherlink.

This week, Master+ subscribers to the site are also getting two bonus puzzles: an easy Slitherlink by Grant Fikes and a hard Crosslink by John Bulten, as well as puzzle solutions. If you want to become a subscriber and get access to bonus puzzles, solutions, e-books, and other rewards, check out this page.

You can find our “Best of 2017” puzzles gathered in this packet.

This year we are going to be cycling between one variety week and then two focused weeks. We kick off our 2018 schedule tomorrow with a (hard) variety week of puzzles from guest author Joseph Howard. The puzzles start out around “Wednesday” level and go up from there.

Our next two weeks (starting 1/22 and 1/29) will feature a single Loop genre and then a single Object Placement genre and there will be a more complete range of very easy to hard puzzles.

This week, Master+ subscribers to the site are also getting two bonus puzzles: a Statue Park by Murat Can Tonta and a Roller Coaster by Joseph Howard, as well as puzzle solutions and a video talkthrough of the Saturday puzzle. If you want to become a subscriber and get access to bonus puzzles, solutions, e-books, and other rewards, check out this page.

This week we’re going to feature our “Best of 2017” with the top puzzles as selected by you through the FAVE button. From Monday through Saturday we’ll be highlighting roughly three puzzles per category (region division, number placement, loop, …). We’ll also be releasing details on new subscription options for our fans, replacing the patronage model we’ve used in the past.

While this is a time for a lot of annual retrospectives, this past month also marked the 5 year anniversary of GMPuzzles. My initial business plan went out on 12/12/12 at 12:12:12 and our first post here was at the end of 2012 before New Year’s Eve. For those that have been solving from the start, and for those who joined later, thanks for supporting our puzzlemakers and our community by being a patron of the site, purchasing our books, or referring friends and family to our puzzles.

I’m incredibly proud that we’ve published about 2500 puzzles in these five years, including some phenomenal classics and cool variations, and have had 0 broken puzzles (with anything other than exactly 1 solution) despite being a hand-crafted puzzle company. I stopped keeping track of how often solvers have doubted us, but I think we are at least 100-0 when someone posts that one of our puzzles has a mistake. (We have had a couple typos in our blog posts and I’ll take the blame on the rare times when the answer entry was wrong but our puzzles have never been.)

Thinking back over five years, I judge that we have been very successful in highlighting great logic puzzle design and encouraging new designers to get into puzzle construction. However, we still have more to do to build a larger audience of solvers that appreciates hand-crafted logic puzzles. Some of our efforts this year will be to have more introductory titles/weeks. In our first year, we often had focus on single classic puzzle types in posted weeks and we will get back to that a little more during this year as well as trying to have more “easy” puzzles more regularly. A longer-term project is to reorganize our website. While we have a large backlog of puzzles in each style, it is hard for a person just discovering our blog to know where/how to start. We’re thinking through some user experience improvements for new solvers reaching the site and welcome any ideas you have.

In 2018, we are also going to work on scaling our publishing. I spent a lot of 2017 turning semi-automated processes into fully automated processes, including how we generate our puzzle art and our web posts. We just finished submission guidelines for all of our puzzles and contributors will receive these soon. I’m also very happy to announce that Serkan Yürekli will be joining me as an editor for our books and other puzzles which will add to our throughput.

We have several new books in mind for 2018, including the launch of a recurring sudoku publication with a mix of Classics and Variations which will be a great title for fans of sudoku, and several more e-books highlighting genres that haven’t been in books yet like Pentominous, Nanro, and Statue Park.

On a different note, we’re going to launch a “Puzzlemasters’ Workshop” title to highlight entirely new puzzles and variations. We get a lot of unusual variations submitted here, and they are hard to post on the web as one-offs. The goal of this title is to give authors enough space to develop an idea across several puzzles. The first edition, expected around midyear, will have a new style from each of our puzzlemasters and a few guests, with 6-10 puzzles in each new style. If this works, we’ll continue this series and open it up for other submissions as a way to continue to cultivate new puzzle design even while our web puzzles start to have a greater focus on “classics”.

Thanks for solving with GMPuzzles, and here’s to a great 2018,
Thomas

Our last week of “question mark” themed puzzles, with a new variation, can be found here.

This next week is the last of our Art of Puzzles 2 weeks. While we’ve been behind in releasing these titles, we will be catching up quickly in 2018. This week features both Minesweeper and Double Minesweeper.

Our supporters will also be receiving a bonus Slithersweeper by John Bulten, access to puzzle solutions, and a video walkthrough of the Wednesday and Friday puzzles. We’re reworking our subscription process; if you’d like to receive some of these special rewards, please check back here later this month.

Our last week of supporter-requested puzzles can be found here.

This next week will feature an unknown theme, with some variety puzzles by Serkan Yürekli and several of a new variation by Chris Green.

Our supporters will also be receiving a bonus Fillomino by Grant Fikes, access to puzzle solutions, and a video walkthrough of the Sunday puzzle (yes, we have seven web + one bonus puzzles this week). We’re reworking our subscription process; if you’d like to receive some of these special rewards, please check back here later this month.

Our last week of bonus sudoku and puzzle hunt puzzles can be found here.

This next week will feature patron-requested puzzles across several different genres.

Our supporters will also be receiving a bonus Statue Park by Murat Can Tonta, access to puzzle solutions, and a video walkthrough of the Saturday puzzle. If you’d like to receive some of these special rewards, please click here for more info.

Our last week of Sunglasses and Snake Pit puzzles can be found here.

Over the next two weeks, we will be posting some classic sudoku and two puzzle hunt style puzzles that I constructed for some recent live events (side activities at the World Sudoku/Puzzle Championships, and the Arlington Puzzle Festival).