A few people have asked if I've stopped competing at puzzles. To minimize stress in my life, the answer for the short term is yes. I'm pouring all my free time into Grandmaster Puzzles and training to run another marathon and those two goals are big enough to fill all my time. So if you are waiting for my next LMI score, you'll have a bit of time ( Read more... )

At midnight, I'm officially launching my professional publishing career. In 2013, I will be doing all my puzzle posting at my new Grandmaster Puzzles blog. Many thanks to Dave Millar of The Griddle and Perplexible for help creating the site ( Read more... )

After over 3 years, this will be my last "Friday Puzzle". But this will not be the last puzzle I post online. I'll be launching a new site in January 2013; watch this space for news soon.

As we end 2012, I'm reminded of my top fan list from earlier in the year after the Holiday Hunt. A couple weeks ago I had to write and publish a puzzle in ~15 ( Read more... )

In Ask Dr. Sudoku, I share my perspective on puzzles and puzzling. If you would like to pose a question for a future Ask Dr. Sudoku, please post them here or send them to me at motris at yahoo dot com.I'm frequently asked in interviews to identify when I first solved puzzles/sudoku. The first answer on puzzles is easy. My answer has typically been ( Read more... )

That Magic Order was the perfect "variant" Number Placement puzzle for our 24H puzzle competition round was a choice made by Palmer Mebane who organized Team USA's round. And it was a great choice as a puzzle naturally themed around 24 different numbers in a Latin Square grid. Magic Order debuted on the 2012 USPC and got a great preview treatment ( Read more... )

My sixth book of puzzles is now released (at least online) with Wei-Hwa Huang as first author. It contains just Tight Fit Sudoku. This is the easiest collection of puzzles of all the books I've written/co-written (similar to the first third of The Art of Sudoku), so a great gift for people new to sudoku variants. But it still offers some puzzles of ( Read more... )

Somehow a "24" appeared inside the grid in each of my number placement puzzles at the most recent 24H Puzzle Championship. While internal givens are not typical for most Skyscraper puzzles, I loved the outside clues and solving path too much to add a different digit to the outside. So with your focus on the 2's and 4's, I hope you can enjoy this 40 ( Read more... )

I've written some great sudoku in my lifetime. This is not the best sudoku I've ever written, but in my opinion this is the best sudoku themed around "24" that can be written. In a concise and appropriate number of givens, a clear visual theme is presented that also matters in the solving process. It was worth 20 points (easy-medium) at the recent ( Read more... )

This week's Friday Puzzle is the last in the object placement section of Team USA's 24 Hour Puzzle Championship set. It is a variation of a recent WPC puzzle style, "Black 21", and probably for being too new and perhaps a bit too long or hard (50 points), it is the only puzzle from our round that was not solved during the competition. So maybe you ( Read more... )

Another of my puzzles from the Team USA 24h Puzzle Championship Round from a couple weeks ago. This one is my quintessential WPC style: Star Battle. This puzzle was also given a score of 20 points, on the easy-medium side as these puzzles go.

Rules:
Place stars into some cells in the grid so that each row, column, and region contains exactly two ( Read more... )