2021 posting schedule

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Happy New Year!

We’re reaching the end of the 13th year of this daily word puzzle blog. For years now, I’ve experimented with annual themes, trying to tie daily puzzles together. This year’s posts will continue that effort.

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


• 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.


• 2018 I went the opposite way from 2016: Each daily puzzle tried to minimize the number of the five common vowels. You might have noticed: A lot of puzzle words contained ‘y’ used as another vowel.


• 2019 took that effect another step: Every puzzle word contained 'y’.


• 2020 played off the spelling of the year itself. Every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles of length 6 or more contained the three letters 'twe', spread out in the word; words of length 4 or 5 contain at least two of those three letters.


• 2021 takes the same approach as 2020, playing off the spelling of the year itself, but with even more success. Every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles contains the three letters 'one', spread out in the word.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Here’s the weekly 2021 posting schedule, starting out easy on each Monday and reaching fiendish by the following Friday.

• 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 this restriction. But that doesn't make prime-size puzzles easy!
• Saturday: Swifty Sudoku
• Sunday: (The Challenge) A series of puzzles that spell out a quote 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!

The last couple of years, the Sunday "quotable Sudoku" TM puzzle has been a punnish Word Sudoku puzzle spelling out a “never die” pun. (Think: "Old lumberjacks never die, they just split.”)

In 2020, Sunday quotable Sudoku puzzles alternately explored three themes: change, happiness and kindness.

In 2021, after the decade that was the year 2020, I’m going back to bad puns using the theme “books never written.” Really bad puns. So bad my grown children say I should be sorry. But to quote a famous candy maker: Not sorry. The louder you groan, the larger my success. If you also wince, I’m dancin’ in the street.

 
In all, I’m posting about 700 Word Sudoku puzzles in 2021.

I’ve also produced almost 30 books of Word Sudoku puzzles—and more are on the way in 2021—that will test your Word Sudoku skills, while hopefully providing you hours of fun. Please visit my amazon author page to see my puzzle books: https://www.amazon.com/author/davethompsonapr. The puzzles in the books have not appeared in the blog.

I started Magic Word Square in 2008—about 11,000 posts ago—to explore the fun of mixing words and anagrams, as well as letters and logic. I hope you enjoy solving these puzzles as much as I do creating them. As always, I invite your comments—please let me know what you think using the blog comment feature.

Thanks,
--Dave

All puzzles and text contained in this blog are copyright © 2008-2021, David H. Thompson. All rights reserved. Please tell your puzzle-loving friends to follow this blog. Thank you!