Last week’s small collection of puzzles from Grant Fikes is here in this PDF.

John Bulten takes on the authorship role for the puzzles this week, including:

Tuesday: Masyu
Thursday: Nurikabe
Saturday: Star Battle

The last batch of puzzles is collected in this PDF.

For the next few weeks we’ll have small sets from some of our puzzle masters. Up first is a Grant Fikes week:

Tuesday: LITS
Thursday: Pentominous
Saturday: Cross the Streams

We’re going to try to slowly restart posting puzzles here. For awhile, this will mean 3 puzzles a week until other backlogged and delayed tasks are completed for the site including an expansion of our e-book store.

In addition to Serkan’s surprise posted this morning, you can expect to see these puzzles over the next two weeks:
6/30: Slitherlink by Grant Fikes
7/2: Skyscrapers by Prasanna Seshadri
7/4: Fillomino by Grant Fikes
7/7: Star Battle by Grant Fikes
7/9: Cave by John Bulten
7/11: Killer Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli

We hope you enjoyed all John’s puzzles from last week, which are fully contained in this PDF. If you solved the complete set, Grandmaster Puzzles would like to reward you with a copy of the seminal reference “A Dictionary of 4,573 Crucial Cross Words and their Clues”, coauthored by John Bulten. This out-of-print 1987 work was the first crossword dictionary we know of to rank words using the methodology now standard for “The New York Times”. All copies will be personally signed by J.B.!

To obtain your copy, simply enter the proper product code (read: the answer to the hidden puzzle) in the applet below before midnight, April 19th (three weeks from today) May 3rd May 17th, so that we can verify your address via email. Solvers will also be recognized in a later post.

As with our first Hidden Contest, this is a challenge of logic and observation. We’ll be adding hints here each week until the close of the entry period.

Hint 1 (4/5/2015): It’s all good, but I recommend 138956247.

Hint 2 (4/12/2015): To obtain the product code, simply follow the correct instructions in the correct order. A review of other puzzlemaster debut weeks may help out.

Hint 3 (4/19/2015): Following the example of other puzzlemasters here, John tried to leave his mark on these puzzles. After finding out what that means, you are looking for an answer with one word followed by several numbers.

(4/26/2015): No extra hint today, but we’re sharing the official solution packet for the week’s puzzles which may be useful.

Hint 4 (5/3/2015): You are looking for a single element in common across all of the puzzles. It may be easiest to find this by looking at the solutions that include shading (BACA, Slithersweeper, and Tapa).

Next week will be a regular variety mix with puzzles from six authors.

All the puzzles from Tom and Prasanna’s variety week can be found in this PDF.

This next week will be somewhat different and also somewhat challenging. But first, an announcement:

With great pleasure I welcome John Bulten to Grandmaster Puzzles as a new Contributing Puzzlemaster. I haven’t added a new Contributing Puzzlemaster in over a year, and John may be a new name for some of you, but after I ran into amazing puzzle after amazing puzzle in his submissions for our upcoming title The Art of Puzzles 2 I know he would be a great addition to our team.

John is an accomplished cruciverbalist as well as a logic puzzle designer. He’s been published in many places including “Will Shortz’s Wordplay” and “GAMES” (now “GAMES World of Puzzles”). He will regale us with puzzles that often require unique verbal logic as part of our 2015 goal to publish more letter- and word-based puzzles and themes. This week features puzzle overlaps where different styles work together:

Monday: BACA (Easy as ABC/Paint by Numbers)
Tuesday: Litro (LITS/Nanro)
Wednesday: Slithersweeper (Double Minesweeper/Slitherlink)
Thursday: Symmetry Fillomino (Fillomino/Spiral Galaxies)
Friday: Pentapa (Tapa/Pentomino Placement)
Saturday: Hidden Shape Sudoku (Shape Sudoku/Battleship Sudoku)

The bonus puzzle for our high-level supporters will be a Cavestream (Cave/Cross the Streams) by John Bulten.

All the puzzles from the recent Guest Contributors week can be found in this PDF.

Next week we’ll have a variety week combining puzzles from Tom Collyer and Prasanna Seshadri:
Monday: Tapa by Prasanna Seshadri
Tuesday: Nurikabe by Tom Collyer
Wednesday: Slitherlink by Prasanna Seshadri
Thursday: Star Battle by Tom Collyer
Friday: Pointer Sums Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri
Saturday: Skyscrapers by Tom Collyer

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

All the puzzles from the recent Loop week can be found in this PDF.

Next week we’ll have a variety week, just from guest contributors that send their ideas to us here at GMPuzzles. The exact schedule is this:
Monday: Nurikabe by Tapio Saarinen
Tuesday: Fillomino by Murat Can Tonta
Wednesday: Masyu (Deformable) by Murat Can Tonta
Thursday: Pentopia by Carl Worth
Friday: Pentopia by Carl Worth
Saturday: 2D Top Heavy Number Place by James McGowan

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

All the puzzles from our “Will Shortz’s Sudoku” teaser week can be found in this PDF.

This next week will start with a special giant puzzle on Monday, marking Prasanna’s Birthday, and then our regular difficulty trend will start on Tuesday. The specific focus is loop puzzles, with Castle Wall, Masyu, Yajilin, Balance Loop, and Round Trip all appearing.

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

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.