[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): Certainly more thematic the first time it was posted (on Valentine’s Day in 2013), this geometry of grid is still a special one in my puzzlemaking history as it was part of a special project to create the first sudoku marriage proposal.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: Happy Valentine’s Day – a heart of given numbers inside a heart-shaped grid.

Rules: Standard Sudo-Kurve rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 3 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:30, Master = 5:30, Expert = 11:00

Solution: PDF

[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): Slight spoiler: While a lot of Tapa puzzles solve from single clue patterns (and where they sit around the grid), this mid-week puzzle highlights how clues can sometimes work together in a given area of the grid.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the composite Yajilin mode where left click marks cells, right click marks dots in cells or X’s on edges, left click+drag draws lines.)

Theme: Greek Cross

Rules: Standard Tapa rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 2.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:20, Master = 3:30, Expert = 7:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for classic Tapa and this link for Tapa variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Tapa puzzles to get started on. More Tapa puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles, in Tapa and Variations 1, 2, and 3, and in our beginner-friendly books Intro to GMPuzzles and Starter Pack 2: Tapa, all by Serkan Yürekli.

[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): Geometric variations of Sudoku hold a lot of potential, and this “bend-y” style has a few good natural grid variations including this most basic one that takes sudoku down to just three “rows”, three “columns”, and three boxes.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: A simple start: a Sudo-Kurve with just three regions.

Rules: Standard Sudo-Kurve rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 1 star

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 0:45, Master = 1:15, Expert = 2:30

Solution: PDF

[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): Tapa is a very special shading puzzle, that grow instantly to be one of my favorites when it was focused on for the World Puzzle Championship in Turkey in 2009. While my puzzles would introduce the genre on the website, Serkan Yürekli who created Tapa would write the full “The Art of Puzzles: Tapa” section as his first of many projects with Grandmaster Puzzles.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the composite Yajilin mode where left click marks cells, right click marks dots in cells or X’s on edges, left click+drag draws lines.)

Theme: A little of everything — clues from 1 to 8 exist in value-mirrored (9-x) symmetric locations throughout the middle of the grid.

Rules: Standard Tapa rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 1.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 0:30, Master = 1:15, Expert = 2:30

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for classic Tapa and this link for Tapa variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Tapa puzzles to get started on. More Tapa puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles, in Tapa and Variations 1, 2, and 3, and in our beginner-friendly books Intro to GMPuzzles and Starter Pack 2: Tapa, all by Serkan Yürekli.

We’re excited to announce that Grandmaster Puzzles will be organizing the puzzles for the next World Sudoku and Puzzle Championships. This news is now confirmed yesterday following a successful vote of the general assembly of the World Puzzle Federation. The next WSPC event will be held October 15-22 in Toronto, Canada. Thomas Snyder and Serkan Yürekli will be coordinating the puzzles, with a much larger team from Canada and the US working together on all the other details.

Organizing the world championships will be a big project for us in 2023, and we are considering how “competitions” and “rankings” can be a larger theme for our new content on the website and YouTube this year. Please keep on the watch for more news and updates, and do reach out to us if you are interested in contributing to the WSPC (particularly North American authors).

In addition to this exciting news, we have our posted our sixth episode in our Smashing the Sudoku series, looking back at our launch puzzle set from 2013:

[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): The final Outside Sudoku is a puzzle that comes in waves, with an easy start suddenly hit by a few different (and increasingly high) hurdles to get all the way to one answer. Can you track the notes/digits well enough to get to the final solution? Notice our old theme style with more description makes the six complete 1-9 pangrams in the theme explicit.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between Sudoku entry modes and a shading mode to mark off clues.)

Theme: Almost all in order – two double 1-9 digit pangrams and two single 1-9 digit pangrams are on the outside of this grid.

Rules: Standard Outside Sudoku rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 4 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 6:15, Master = 10:00, Expert = 20:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for more Outside Sudoku puzzles. More Outside Sudoku puzzles can be found in Masterpiece Sudoku Mix 4.

[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): This hardest Skyscrapers puzzle of the first set chains a lot of the outside clues together to force just one solution. I certainly remember a lot of clue adjustment that was possible in the late stage of this puzzle before a few orthogonal clues snapped together to leave a completed grid.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: Countdown!

Rules: Standard Skyscrapers rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 3.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:30, Master = 8:00, Expert = 16:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for classic Skyscrapers puzzles and this link for variations on Skyscrapers puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Skyscrapers Puzzles to get started on. More Skyscrapers puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles, in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli, and in the e-book Skyscrapers by Ashish Kumar.

[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): Sometimes it is hard to understand when a clue in an Outside Sudoku is very necessary, somewhat necessary, or superfluous. With a few different themes overlapping in this puzzle (including Fibonacci numbers, multiples of 2, and cubes) the important thing will be to make out how to “use” each clue even if that does not mean putting in sure placements yet.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between Sudoku entry modes and a shading mode to mark off clues.)

Theme: A series of series (and a constant and a square) — The seemingly random numbers outside the grid actually have some rhyme and reason.

Rules: Standard Outside Sudoku rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 3 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:00, Master = 7:15, Expert = 14:30

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for more Outside Sudoku puzzles. More Outside Sudoku puzzles can be found in Masterpiece Sudoku Mix 4.

[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): This very memorable Skyscrapers started by thinking about placing a lot of twos and placing a lot of “bigger than twos”. The puzzle got an extra level of attention in a “How to Build a City” post describing the construction/intended solution path at the same time which many people point to as one of their favorite early posts on the site. This style of general logic puzzle design is covered extensively in Puzzlecraft: How to Make Every Kind of Puzzle for those who want to practice making grandmaster puzzles for themselves.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)

Theme: Either/or — a hard solving theme despite so many clues.

Rules: Standard Skyscrapers rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 2.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:30, Master = 5:30, Expert = 11:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for classic Skyscrapers puzzles and this link for variations on Skyscrapers puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Skyscrapers Puzzles to get started on. More Skyscrapers puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles, in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli, and in the e-book Skyscrapers by Ashish Kumar.

[This is a repost from our archives with new notes at the top (original post here): While Outside Sudoku is a simple concept to understand (all the outside digits work like placement notes for the first three cells in that direction), making thematically interesting puzzles is more challenging. This puzzle started by placing the four big 1-9 nonets outside the grid and then finding an interesting set of deductions on the other edges of the grid to get to one solution.]

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between Sudoku entry modes and a shading mode to mark off clues.)

Theme: Four Nonets

Rules: Standard Outside Sudoku rules.

Estimated Difficulty*: 2 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:15, Master = 3:30, Expert = 7:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for more Outside Sudoku puzzles. More Outside Sudoku puzzles can be found in Masterpiece Sudoku Mix 4.