2018 posting schedule

Less is more.”

Happy New Year!

If you’ve followed this blog, you know I’ve experimented with annual themes, trying to tie daily puzzles together.

2017 expanded on 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 contained the three letters of the name of the month when the puzzle posted.

2016 was the year of the vowel—almost all daily puzzles above size 6 used all of AEIOU.

For 2018, we’ll go the opposite way: Each daily puzzle will try to minimize the number of vowels.

A display of the number of vowels in the words you’ll see in the 2018 daily puzzles shows most words only have one vowel, not counting y. But you’ll quickly notice that a lot of this year’s words also contain y!

I’ll continue last year’s posting schedule this year; it increases the difficulty of the puzzles through the week, Monday to Friday.

• Monday: 4x4 and 6x6 Word Sudoku puzzles (easiest)
• Tuesday: 9x9 Word Sudoku puzzle (par)
• Wednesday: 8x8 Word Sudoku puzzle (a bit harder, because it’s unusual)
• Thursday: 10x10 Word Sudoku puzzle (a bit harder still, because it’s bigger)
• Friday: 5x5 and 7x7 Word Sudoku puzzles (irregular inner shapes create more complexity; these are hard!)
  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 (not too difficult; most puzzles are 6x6)
  
• Sunday: (The Challenge) ‘Punnish’ Word Sudoku puzzle and, every other week, also a 12x12 Hidden Word Sudoku puzzle (12x12s are hard because they’re big. But they’re easier than most newspapers’ Sunday 16x16! And Punnish Sudoku tries to use 5x5s and 7x7s, so they’re harder, too.)

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 three year’s “Never die” puns—as in:

Old lumberjacks never die, they just split.”

So in 2018, I’m posting about 500 Word Sudoku puzzles.

I’ve also written nine 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/137-3371147-0612806?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=dave+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 © 2008-2018, David H. Thompson. All rights reserved.
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