Hi there! Have you recovered from the hard puzzle streak?

Especially Saturday was an interesting day. It really split opinion. Some thought it was the best puzzle in a long time, and others thought it was simply too hard. I understand both sides very well. The combinations of clues had some very unique consequences, but it was also practically impossible to solve without trying out several hypothetical scenarios (by using corner tags, or by other means). And even more so on Sunday! Both should probably have been ranked Brutal, not sure what I was thinking there. Anyway, if you gave up and want to see the logic, check out these guides by Leonid (You can usually find a link to his daily guides on weekends if you scroll down a bit on the daily puzzle page):
Saturday 19th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTCwDkaA4q8&list=PLrsktZJm5gWcEQ7MIWa87-yYbjsSEl6bY
Sunday 20th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZJPQ5Xx5Ro&list=PLrsktZJm5gWcEQ7MIWa87-yYbjsSEl6bY

Interestingly, median times for Saturday weren't that high! The % of solves without using hints was a historically low 41%, but even Friday was on average slower. It might be that it was kind of easy to guess your way through some of the hard deductions. Or maybe the deductions were so obviously hard that it drove people to use hints sooner, speeding up an average solve.

Since the results were so odd, I wanted to see if the times differed for perfect, all-green solves. As I've often mentioned, those are usually faster, since if you only look at perfect solves, you leave out beginners and only compare with the best. But sometimes this isn't so, and both Saturday and Sunday were such exceptions: When looking only at perfect solves, the median time (top 50%) was a few minutes slower than the median time for non-perfect solves (while on Friday the median for perfect solves was one minute faster). Unfortunately it doesn't make sense to share the exact stats for perfect solves since the sample size is so small. Especially for top 1%, odd edge cases start affecting the data too much when only 11% had a perfect solve.

Anyway, in short, the weekend puzzles were very hard, and you shouldn't feel bad if you didn't finish them. But I hope get back in the saddle with today's easier puzzle!

Here are all the stats for last week's puzzles. Top 1% / 10% / 50% solve times, then comes % of perfect solves and % of solves with no hints:

Mon 2026-09-14 (Easy): 1m 8s / 1m 40s / 3m 6s / 53% / 89%
Tue 2026-09-15 (Medium): 1m 52s / 2m 57s / 5m 55s / 40% / 72%
Wed 2026-09-16 (Tricky): 2m 55s / 4m 58s / 9m 57s / 22% / 56%
Thu 2026-09-17 (Tricky): 3m 3s / 5m 2s / 10m 42s / 26% / 59%
Fri 2026-09-18 (Hard): 3m 32s / 5m 56s / 11m 20s / 24% / 62%
Sat 2026-09-19 (Hard): 2m 32s / 4m 36s / 10m 12s / 11% / 41%
Sun 2026-09-20 (Hard): 4m 3s / 6m 50s / 15m 32s / 15% / 42%

Alright, then for the weekly bonus puzzles:
#1 Easy - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/782da6860ce9
#2 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/a29cee9d3d0f
#3 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/fa96d629d5f9
#4 Brutal - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/50655f044590

And here are some of the most recommended community puzzles from last week. Some really interesting deductions there! Looks like user 6e442a has been busy making fun puzzles and I'm sharing two of them here. Great puzzles again, thank you for everyone who made them! And if you think you have a good puzzle in you but don't know how to create them, send me your user ID (you can find it on the Account page) I'll give you access to the editor.
#1 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=6e442a-a946cfc2fe843c8c
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=6e442a-1a0051697db289bc
#3 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=f9fb73-e6370e64b50accd1
#4 Hard - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=89fd55-06bf4ff86dd2cbf2

By the way, did you also look up what spurtle is? Someone checked Google trends and saw that "spurtle" was trending on the day of the puzzle. I find it both flattering and hilarious!

Now, I wish you a great week!

-Sam