PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: Logical

Rules: Variation of Fillomino rules where regions with the same shape must avoid each other instead of regions with the same size (all regions in a pentominous puzzle are pentominoes).

Specifically, divide the grid into 20 pentominoes so that no two pentominoes of the same shape (including rotations/reflections) share an edge. A cell with a letter in it must be part of the pentomino shape normally associated with that letter as given below the grid. Not all pentomino shapes need appear.

Answer String: Enter the letter associated with the pentomino occupying each cell in the two marked rows from left to right, separating the rows with a comma. Use CAPITAL LETTERS!

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:00, Master = 4:00, Expert = 8:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: Logical

Rules: Variation of Fillomino rules where regions with the same shape must avoid each other instead of regions with the same size (all regions in a pentominous puzzle are pentominoes). See an earlier Pentominous puzzle here.

Specifically, divide the grid into 45 pentominoes so that no two pentominoes of the same shape (including rotations/reflections) share an edge. A cell with a letter in it must be part of the pentomino shape normally associated with that letter as given below the grid. Not all pentomino shapes need appear.

Answer String: Enter the letter associated with the pentomino occupying each cell in the marked rows from left to right, separating the rows with a comma. Use CAPITAL LETTERS!

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 6:30, Master = 10:30, Expert = 21:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

This is a “Twisted Tuesday” puzzle variation.

Theme: Logical

Rules: Variation of Fillomino rules where regions with the same shape must avoid each other instead of regions with the same size (all regions in a pentominous puzzle are pentominoes).

Specifically, divide the grid into 20 pentominoes so that no two pentominoes of the same shape (including rotations/reflections) share an edge. A cell with a letter in it must be part of the pentomino shape normally associated with that letter as given below the grid. Not all pentomino shapes need appear.

Answer String: Enter the letter associated with the pentomino occupying each cell in the two marked rows from left to right, separating the rows with a comma. Use CAPITAL LETTERS!

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:00, Master = 4:30, Expert = 9:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.

Splitting apart a large grid into subregions or shapes is the unifying element for our “Region Division” category, where we will be announcing the five best of 2022 puzzles today selected from 47 posted puzzles. The “best of” puzzles are gathered together in this PDF file.

We kick off today’s “best of region division” section with this great Fillomino puzzle by Jonas Gleim. The separation of evens and odds leads to some interesting emergent logic as one works to the unique solution.

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a number entry mode.)

Contributing puzzlemaster Takeya Saikachi drew a lot of attention with his puzzles in 2022 including this Cave (Myopia) combination that takes the familiar “Myopia” arrows and applies them to another genre where this was at least my first time seeing this kind of combination.

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)

Early in each year we often post “New Year” puzzles with a clear 20XX theme. This 2022 Fillomino from Prasanna Seshadri was one of our first puzzles in the year and an instant “classic” destined for this best of ranking.

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a number entry mode.)

While we can’t tell you the theme behind this Spiral Galaxies puzzle by Murat Can Tonta, one of the commenters said “This might be my favourite puzzle yet!” We think you might enjoy the solving path and hidden surprises too.

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a shading mode.)

While this was a very competitive category this year, the top puzzle stood out clearly from the rest and was another masterpiece by JinHoo Ahn who keeps finding impressive ways to use very few letters to make brilliant Pentominous puzzles. This elegant 8-letter Pentominous is our best Region Division puzzle of 2022.

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing, a letter entry mode, and a shading mode.)

Our most recent week of Pentominous puzzles is gathered in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in our e-store here.

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

This coming week will feature four classic Castle Wall puzzles as well as two variations.

Our most recent variety mix week of puzzles, featuring styles from our latest e-book, are in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. You can get 60 more original puzzles, from Arrow Sudoku, TomTom, Pentopia, Aqre, Araf, and Tapa-Like Loop genres in the Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly Volume 5 now on sale in our store.

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

In a few minutes we’ll be releasing a Sunday Stumper, and then the rest of this week will feature Pentominous puzzles and variations.

Our most recent week of Slitherlink puzzles are gathered in this PDF and the solutions are in this PDF. We will have a challenging Sunday Stumper up soon by Matej Uher, and this week also marks the release of Slitherlink and Variations 2, a new e-book also by Matej Uher with 30 classic Slitherlink (including 1 giant) and 22 variations across 6 styles. Check out our store for details on all our Slitherlink collections.

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

We’ve also recently uploaded a new version of Penpa-Edit (from 2.26.18 to 3.0.3) with several quality of life improvements. A big one (that we will highlight again in the future when we have an appropriate week) is that coloring of regions now works like drawing region boundaries for solution checking purposes in Fillomino, Pentominous, Araf, and other puzzles. As long as everything is colored (i.e., not white) and edge-adjacent regions are a different color, they are marked as implicit edges and compatible with checking. This update also includes some improvements to the top interface sizing that maintains the size (rather than moving up and down) when shifting between tools, better keyboard support for Sudoku movement in hex/cube modes, and several others described in the change history. Thanks to Swaroop and the other developers for these improvements.

This next week will feature LITS puzzles.

Just released in our e-store is Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly: Volume 4, our latest collection of original puzzles spanning multiple genres. This volume includes several familiar styles with the first extended section of Japanese Sums puzzles we’ve published, which will also be the style for this upcoming web week.

The full set of elegant and hand-crafted puzzles, coming from twenty-two of the world’s best puzzle designers, spans:

– 7 Even/Odd Sudoku and 4 Isodoku (Even/Odd)
– 7 Japanese Sums and 3 Easy as Japanese Sums
– 7 Minesweeper and 3 Minesweeper (Sudoku)
– 7 Nurikabe and 3 Nurikabe (Pairs)
– 7 Pentominous and 3 Pentominous (Cipher)
– 7 Castle Wall and 3 Castle Wall (Hex)

I wanted to start some of our 2022 updates for the year by sharing this draft schedule for our books, with most detail set for the first six months of the year. We are continuing our Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly and Masterpiece Sudoku Mix series that we launched in 2021, and also starting a new, accessible puzzle series of “Starter Packs” for people to get into some of our different logic styles. In the same style as the Intro to GMPuzzles books, these Starter Packs will contain ~30 puzzles for ~$1.50 and all puzzles are from 1-2.5 stars in approximate difficulty. Eventually, as we release these books, we will also rebuild the web flow for these styles so that there is a way besides the “blog” to learn about the puzzles, how to use Penpa, and so on.

Book list:
1. Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri (January)
2. Starter Pack 1: Fillomino by Grant Fikes (February)
3. Masterpiece Sudoku Mixes 5 and 6 (Tight Fit Sudoku and Consecutive Pairs Sudoku) (early March)
4. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 3 featuring Thermo-Sudoku, Skyscrapers, Battleships, Cross the Streams, Kuromasu, Balance Loop (late March)
5. Starter Pack 2: Tapa by Serkan Yürekli (April)
6. Slitherlink and Variations 2 (April)
7. Tapa and Variations 3 (May)
8. Starter Pack 3: TomTom by Thomas Snyder (June)
9. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 4 featuring Even/Odd Sudoku, Japanese Sums, Minesweeper, Nurikabe, Pentominous, Castle Wall (late June)
10. Masterpiece Sudoku Mixes 7 and 8 (July)
11. Starter Pack 4: Slitherlink by Takeya Saikachi (late July/early August)
12. Loop Variety Collection 2 (August)
13. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 5 (September)
14. TBD title (October)
15. Starter Pack 5: Star Battle by JinHoo Ahn (October)
16. TBD title (November)
17. Starter Pack 6: Jigsaw Sudoku by Thomas Snyder (December)
18. Grandmaster Puzzles Quarterly 6 (December)

The eighteen book schedule is ambitious but lets us diversify the kinds of titles and different puzzles we are publishing while also taking up new goals like getting Penpa/digital solving forms of these by sometime this year.

Not on the “official” list, but part of projects I am working on separately, are releases containing our old patron puzzles including our “Giant” puzzles, starting a Giants annual book, and rereleasing some of my older books of sudoku variants and TomTom puzzles. There is also a very different but interesting puzzle collection book that has been stuck in editing that we hope to get out.

Paired with this schedule, we have also started to look at how easily we can set up a “subscription” in our book store to automatically release these titles to people who want to have all books in a given series like GPQ or who want all books that we publish.

Here are our best Region Division puzzles of 2021 selected from the 52 web posts in this category based on FAVE votes, web comments, and tester comments. All of these puzzles are gathered in this PDF file.

One of our early weeks in 2021 focused on Araf puzzles and this “Oh Nine” Araf by Jeffrey Bardon showed that 2021 was going to be a good year for Region Division puzzles. Like some of our other best puzzles this year, this puzzle uses just the standard rules of a “classic” style, but it stretches those rules a bit in the visual presentation to lead to a very interesting looking puzzle as well as a very interesting solve.

While there is some debate about if Kuromasu (which uses rules similar to Cave and Four Winds) is a Region Division puzzle or a Shading puzzle, there is no debate that Swaroop Guggilam’s Kuromasu was one of the best 2021 puzzles based off the vote of our solvers. The X pattern in this grid leads to a nice interaction of clues.

The “checkered” variation of Fillomino led to another favorite puzzle in 2021, this one from Serkan Yürekli where the clues are under “Siege”.

This year had a close race between two Pentominous puzzles for the top Region Division spot. One of these puzzles, a Pentominous (Cipher) by Takeya Saikachi, was another gem from this constructor with a “Box in Box” theme.

Our best Region Division puzzle of the year goes to this unusual Pentominous by Elyot Grant that again obeys all the regular rules of the style but takes advantage of an unusual grid shape to make a “No Givens” puzzle that has a lot of different thinking to get to the one answer.