Sunday, January 1, 2017

2017 posting schedule


Happy New Year!

2016 was the year of the vowel in this blog—almost all weekly puzzles above size 6 used all of AEIOU. 2017 generalizes the idea of including one combination of letters in a bunch of words, using the 3-letter abbreviations for each month (JAN, FEB, MAR, etc.). Almost every weekday Hidden Word Sudoku puzzle this year contains the three letters of the name of the month when the puzzle posts. (4x4 puzzles in February and July contain only two of those letters—best I could do!)

I’ve revamped the posting schedule this year to reflect the difficulty of the puzzles, rather than their size. 4x4 and 6x6 are easiest; 9x9 is expected and most familiar. 8x8 is a little harder, only because it’s less familiar; 10x10 is harder still because there are a lot of symbols to manipulate. 5x5 and 7x7 are intermediate in size, but much harder than any of the others, because they contain nonrectangular boxes inside and because they’re least familiar.

Here’s the 2017 posting schedule.
  • Monday: 4x4 and 6x6 Word Sudoku puzzles
  • Tuesday: 9x9 Word Sudoku puzzle
  • Wednesday: 8x8 Word Sudoku puzzle
  • Thursday: 10x10 Word Sudoku puzzle
  • Friday: 5x5 and 7x7 Word Sudoku puzzles
    As you know, Sudoku puzzle sizes are normally not based on primes; the internal box (rectangle or square) have width and length, and the outside dimension of a puzzle is the product of these two integers. Relaxing the requirement that the internal shapes be rectangular boxes removes the restriction.
  • Saturday: Swifty Sudoku
  • Sunday: (The Challenge) ‘Punnish’ Word Sudoku puzzle and, every other week, also a 12x12 Hidden Word Sudoku puzzle
A Swifty Sudoku puzzle spells out a hopefully very bad adverbial pun named after (and loosely based on) the wonderful children’s books about fictional character Tom Swift. The series authors hardly ever used the verb “said” by itself. A Swifty pun takes Tom’s speaking style to the max on the absurd scale, as in:
Parsley, sage, rosemary," said Tom timelessly.”
or
Let's go for another gallop," Tom recanted.
Solve the individual Word Sudoku puzzles and place the circled letters in the corresponding numbered quote grid to spell out the pun. Then groan aloud! A Punnish Word Sudoku puzzle set spells out a more general pun; our theme this year continues the last two year’s “Never die” puns—as in:
Old lumberjacks never die, they just split.”
So in 2017, I’m posting about 500 Word Sudoku puzzles. I started Magic Word Square in mid 2008—not quite 8,000 posts ago—to explore the fun of mixing words, letters and logic. I’ve also created four books of Word Sudoku puzzles—not used in this blog—that will test your Word Sudoku skills, while hopefully also providing you hours of fun. Search www.amazon.com for “Dave Thompson Sudoku” or click on https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=dave+thompson+sudoku&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Adave+thompson+sudoku.

I hope you enjoy solving these puzzles at least as much as I do creating them. As always, I invite your comments—please let me know what you think!

Thanks,
--Dave

All puzzles and text contained in this blog are copyright © 2008-2017, David H. Thompson. All rights reserved. Please tell your puzzle-loving friends to follow this blog. Thank you!

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