New puzzles added for 2026

[Casual-Puzzler]

I have been on this site solving logic puzzles for many years now, although I am never one of the fastest: I like the 4x5 grids, usually moderate, but occasionaly challenging.

I have noticed that some of the older puzzles have ridiculously fast times of completion, some of which are faster than I am able to read through the clues, as has been posted by others in the past.

However, while solving the newer puzzles, I note that none have so far been completed in anything like the times for the older puzzles!

Perhaps, they have not been played several times by the same person, with the solution copied, and then just input into the puzzle on the next attempt!

All very odd.

Anyway, I just enjoy solving the puzzles, the time is just irrelevant to me: So, just to say what a brilliant site this is, and keep having fun.

Out:

[tviolet]

So I am generally one of the very fast solvers and I see two factors which contribute to the discrepancy in top scores between the old puzzles and the newer ones.

1) Familiarity with the clues. There are only a limited number of "stories" which are then used for multiple different puzzles. I've been doing these puzzles for so long that I'm familiar with all the stories and don't have to waste any time doing math with how far apart things are. I'm also pretty familiar with the order of the names and values. I didn't realize how much work that familiarity was doing until I started doing the new ones. (just look at the post I made complaining that there might be a mistake in one of the new puzzles and it turns out I was just totally misreading a clue)

2) Limited number of play throughs. I don't hit my top speed every time I do a puzzle, it's really dependent on if I'm tired, hungry, have recently had sugar (craters my scores), etc. Some days I'm on fire and some days my brain just refuses to work and I'm bombing every puzzles. But the new ones have had so few play throughs that I'm setting records with really mid scores. This will change as more of the faster solvers (contrary, RikSmits, Ticonderoga, Soggy Cactus, qazi, new comers the frequentist, RetiredNow, and Diavoletta) hit more of puzzles on a fast day. The top scores will absolutely come down and be closer to the older puzzles.

[ella]

Oh yes, I will die on this hill: it's too time-consuming and not useful to try to cheat but improving and "knowing" the units of measurement, what we're looking into, which direction we're going, what we're trying to do in each puzzle, etc -- all eminently "learnable" and with each new pass, everyone improves. I don't "know" any answers, but I DO know what 18x5 is or 23x7 or whatever is. I rarely mess up units between things on the old puzzles, but I have been doing it with regularity on the new ones. I have been caught more than once by the linen paper v linen cover thing.... It's all normal and in a year or so, that linen/linen thing won't trip me up and I will know that we're looking at 5 year spans or one year or whatever without thinking on these puzzles. Honestly, it's not fun to cheat, but trying these new puzzles is great fun for me!

Edit to add: I honestly don't believe anyone who is here with regularity is cheating. I don't even know that it's possible, and I wouldn't know how.