Hi!

Last week I received a question that made me thinking: "What is a mech?"
Yeah, I know. It's a weird word. I just needed a profession to match the emoji, and couldn't come up with anything short enough that would fit in a long clue. Some googling convinced me that "mech" is understandable, so I went with it. But it still pains me every time I see it.

And now we have "scientist" too! Isn't that even longer than "mechanic"? Yes, it has more letters, but it actually takes less space due to having more narrow letters. But I think it might have some issues in longer clues as well. It's actually still excluded from community puzzles, since there I don't have the power to ensure it fits in all clues.

Thinking of these things, I also started thinking of "cook". Why did I name it cook and not chef? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a chef much more interesting a profession, since a chef also designs the recipes?

And finally, a question I keep getting: "What's a sleuth"? Well, a sleuth is a shorter word for a detective. Again, I couldn't fit the longer word in all clues. I'm also making a distinction between all the sleuths and you by having the characters address you as "detective". So sleuth a useful word in this context, but it's maybe a bit informal and less known, causing some question marks.

So, all in all, I'm wondering if it would be time to re-name some of the professions? Or perhaps even come up with some new ones? Don't be startled if you see a chef instead of a cook one of these days!

That was a lot of context for something that might or might not happen. Now, something that did happen: A terrible mistake on my part! On Friday, someone asked on Bluesky: "Today's Clues By Sam feels familiar somehow (the B1 and D2 clues in particular) — am I remembering correctly that there's one with a very similar structure in the archives?"
So I had a look, and yes, the same puzzle had been published once before! Oops!

I have a pool of puzzles in a folder where I pick the puzzles from. When picking a puzzle I simply move the file out of the folder into a "published" folder. Seems like on Aug 30 2025 I forgot the process and instead of moving I copied the puzzle file. So it's been sitting there as a duplicate for almost a year, waiting...

Has this happened before? With a simple script I checked if there are any duplicates in the published folder, and no, seems like this is the first time! Phew. And now I have a new step in my process. Whenever I publish a new puzzle, I check it doesn't already exist in the "published" folder.

But hey! This gives us a very exciting opportunity to compare two different stats for the same puzzle! So I'm kind of happy I did this blunder.
Last year the puzzle was published as a "hard" Saturday puzzle, which seems more fitting, since on Friday the median time was well over 10 minutes. But in 2025 the median time was only above 7 minutes! Also the % of solves with no hints went down from 68% (2025) to 52% (2026). What could explain the difference? I can come up with a couple of reasons:
1) There are more "casual" solvers today. Puzzle fanatics were the first ones to discover Clues by Sam in 2025, while a broader audience discovered it later. It would be interesting to draw an "average skill curve" over time, but I think that'd be difficult, since the difficulty of the puzzles has also changed over time.
2) An average Saturday solver is faster than a Friday solver. There's always a significant drop in solvers over the weekend. Probably many do these at work as a way to pass time, but would rather spend time with their family than chase criminals over the weekend. But those who really love puzzles are more likely to come back also during the weekend. I've always suspected this, as low weekend median times keep surprising me.

How about other days last week? One fun stat stands out: Only 13% had a perfect solve on Saturday. It wasn't the hardest puzzle since I wanted to give something easier after the overly hard Friday. But there was one yellow square I could see in most shared results. Did you avoid it?
Mon 2026-08-03 (Easy): 1m 24s / 2m 3s / 3m 50s / 57% / 85%
Tue 2026-08-04 (Medium): 1m 57s / 3m 6s / 6m 4s / 43% / 72%
Wed 2026-08-05 (Tricky): 2m 9s / 3m 10s / 5m 46s / 32% / 79%
Thu 2026-08-06 (Tricky): 2m 13s / 3m 43s / 7m 27s / 41% / 65%
Fri 2026-08-07 (Tricky): 3m 32s / 5m 40s / 10m 34s / 20% / 52%
Sat 2026-08-08 (Tricky): 2m 18s / 3m 55s / 7m 38s / 13% / 62%
Sun 2026-08-09 (Hard): 3m 39s / 6m 24s / 13m 1s / 27% / 58%

And now for the juicy part, bonus puzzles!
#1 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/1ecfdc984e6d
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/78e5d3c3471f
#3 Brutal - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/147da481b09c

And here are some of the best rated community puzzles from last week. I always try to pick some on the easier side, as it's very easy to make a really evil one. The evil ones also tend to get less recommendations. But if you like really evil ones, go to the community archive and try out some with the highest median times!
#1 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=41a8e9-f72b3a69641e9eca
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=45fc09-61d9a651e103456e
#3 Hard - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=758cea-5ff4dc57925b1452

It's been a longer newsletter than usual, but I have one more small update: There's now a grayscale color theme! This is for those who use ink readers, grayscale color filters, or have challenges seeing combinations of colors with all currently available color modes. I think it's still a bit of a mess, but I'm trying to use it myself and slowly improve it over time. Hopefully you find it useful, and let me know if you have ideas for improvement!

I wish you a great week! Have fun solving crimes!

-Sam