Hey ya!

Yes, that's from the song "Hey Ya!" by OutKast. My brain has been stuck in lyrics mode since Saturday's puzzle with all the singers. Did you recognize them all? Based on discussions online, Ian seems to have been the trickiest one to identify (even if I was particularly proud of the twist on lyrics for that one). I won't spoil the answer though, in case you didn't do Saturday's puzzle yet.

Tuesday was another riddle day. Did you get that one? Riddles are a new concept I accidentally stumbled on just a few days before. I hope you liked it, since I might use the idea more in the future. A puzzle within a puzzle, what's not to like!

And talking of last week's puzzles, how did Sunday go for you? It was definitely the hardest puzzle in a while, dividing opinions. Some loved it, some hated it. One thing that might help is being familiar with Minesweeper or Fill-a-pix techniques: If you know the number of criminal neighbours of two persons next to each other, you can count how many fit in the overlapping area, and so you know how many must be in the non-overlapping area. If this number matches the available tiles in the non-overlapping area, you can identify them. I know reading this probably doesn't make any sense, but if you're curious, try solving a certain part of Sunday's puzzle with this in mind. You'll know which part when you see it!

Here're the rest of the stats for last week:
Top 1% / 10% / 50% / Perfect % / No Hints %
Mon 2026-07-06 (Easy): 1m 19s / 1m 54s / 3m 18s / 60% / 88%
Tue 2026-07-07 (Medium): 1m 42s / 2m 35s / 4m 52s / 45% / 79%
Wed 2026-07-08 (Tricky): 1m 53s / 2m 50s / 5m 23s / 52% / 76%
Thu 2026-07-09 (Tricky): 1m 48s / 2m 59s / 5m 53s / 47% / 71%
Fri 2026-07-10 (Tricky): 2m 36s / 4m 7s / 7m 49s / 33% / 71%
Sat 2026-07-11 (Hard): 3m 34s / 5m 38s / 10m 24s / 30% / 56%
Sun 2026-07-12 (Brutal): 3m 31s / 6m 19s / 13m 47s / 19% / 52%

Then for the bonus puzzles! The third one is quite Evil, so watch out. This time we have a tutorial video by Leonid you can follow if you want to try it out but keep getting stuck!

#1 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/38a169bc124c
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/98501fee863e
#3 Evil - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/a0cb1483fabc
Video for #3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTNd99wr410&list=PLrsktZJm5gWcEQ7MIWa87-yYbjsSEl6bY

And then we have a lot of new community puzzles. Here are some of my favourites:
#1 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=f9fb73-8092e7c200ca4bde
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=c34de3-76325123c6321a4f
#3 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=70ce57-0beaee4606f3feca

Hope these keep your detective brain busy for a while! No other big updates this time, as I'm in a bit of a vacation mode. So, until next week!

-Sam