Published books
Sudoku Xtra magazine issue 4
Feb 25th
Issue 4 of Sudoku Xtra magazine is now with us! I really think I might be putting too many puzzles into it, because typing up the list of content just knocked me out with how much is crammed into its 52 large-format pages! Is too much possible? I don’t know, but look at this enormous list:
128 puzzles in total, including several seriously giant ones. Brand new for this issue:
- Samurai Star Killer Sudoku Pro
- Number Link Samurai
- Odd Pair Sudoku
- Samurai Odd Pair Sudoku
- Sudoku Inequality Jigsaw
- Jigsaw Sudoku 6×6 Variety Pack (including toroidal, inequality, X, consecutive and killer)
- Killer Sudoku Pro Jigsaw
- Sudoku 15×15 and Sudoku 18×18
- Killer Sudoku 15×15
- Odd & Even Pair Sudoku
- Killer Sudoku Prime
Regulars from issue 3:
- Hanjie
- Masyu
- Calcudoku (three times as many as in previous issues!)
- Slitherlink
- Consecutive Sudoku
- Hitori
- Samurai Star
- Samurai Star Jigsaw
- Number Link
- Jigsaw Sudoku 8×8, 9×9 and 10×10
- Toroidal Sudoku and Toroidal Inequality
- Kakuro
- Futoshiki
- Killer Sudoku
- Skyscraper
- Skyscraper Sudoku
- Samurai Sudoku
- SSSS: Skyscraper Samurai Star Sudoku
- Sudoku Inequality
- Sudoku Extra Regions
- Jigsaw Sudoku Extra Regions
- Killer Sudoku Jigsaw
- SOS: Samurai Outside Sudoku
- Outside Sudoku
- Sudoku 8×8
- Sudoku 12×12 and 16×16
- Samurai Extra Regions
- Yajilin
- Nurikabe
Adding to that already exhausting list still further are the community puzzles:
- Heyawake
- King’s Journey (also known as Hidato[TM], Numbrix[TM] and many other names)
- Mosaic (Minesweeper picture puzzle)
- As Easy as ABC
- Knight’s Tour
- Shapely Skyscraper
- Isolate
- Klump
And all of this for just £3.99 or $5.99 – it really is fantastic value!
If you’d like to get hold of it just pop on over to the Sudoku Xtra website!
Sudoku 16×16 Volume 1 – Sudoku Xtra Specials
Feb 15th
A book of just 16×16 Sudoku is now available both for download or in pre-printed form from Lulu.com or Amazon.com (with free delivery in some cases).
I’ve had lots of requests for a book like this over the past couple of years, so I hope if you’re one of the people who’ve wanted something like this that the book meets your expectations! All of the puzzles have nice symmetry, and the difficulty level is set such that you won’t need to make lots of fiddly pencil marks in the grid (or indeed any pencil marks at all, if you don’t want to).
It’s printed on large paper (A4 at Lulu, 8″x10″ at Amazon), with just one puzzle per page, so you’re getting the puzzles at a comfortable size for solving. Full solutions are included, and with 50 puzzles it’s going to take you a long time to solve them all!
Please feel free to post any comments here, or head over to Sudoku Xtra and take a browse on the discussion forums – and maybe join in!
Sudoku Xtra issue 3 now available!
Jan 25th
I’m really pleased to announce that issue 3 of Sudoku Xtra magazine is now available for download!
This issue is packed full of all sorts of puzzles, including SOS (Samurai Outside Sudoku!), Toroidal Inequalities and many more. Community puzzles include picture puzzle Mosaic from Clarity Media, and some fantastic Slitherlink-Masyu cross-over puzzles called Shotgun Slitherlink from David Millar of The Griddle. There’s also some brilliant Klump and Navigrid puzzles from Vexus Puzzle Design.
With 121 puzzles it will almost certainly take you far more than the month until issue 4 to complete, so you’d better get hold of it as soon as possible! 
Pre-printed versions will be available in the next couple of days, but you can download and print it yourself immediately!
Sudoku Xtra issue 2 now available
Dec 23rd
I’m very pleased to announce that as of 24 hours ago Sudoku Xtra issue 2 is available for download or ordering in printed form.
It contains a staggering 121 puzzles, with only just a few of each type so there is a huge range of variety. At just £2.95/$4.95 it really is great value, but if you’re still not sure take a look at the sample part of issue 1 still available on the Sudoku Xtra site.
New puzzles for this issue include some crazy Sudoku variants, such as Samurai Killer Calcudoku Inequality, and a whole load of novel community-supplied puzzles, including Puzzle L and Knight’s Tour.
With so many different puzzles you’re sure to find not just one but lots of puzzles you’ll enjoy, so check out Sudoku Xtra today!
Sudoku Xtra ‘community’ puzzles
Nov 20th
Sudoku Xtra issue 1 is only just on sale and I’m already starting work on issue 2!
If you’ve read issue 1 then you’ll know that I’ve proposed a ‘community’ puzzle section at the back, where people get to send in their own puzzles and I will include a selection in a special section. The idea is to try and build up the kind of puzzle community that some of the Japanese-language publications have, but which we haven’t yet seen in an English-language magazine. Hopefully it will lead to a virtuous spiral, with on the one hand people who contribute puzzles getting a larger audience for their own work whilst similarly on the other hand encouraging more people to read the magazine for the novel puzzles – and hopefully all the while encouraging more feedback too, which will help everyone.
In time for the second issue I’m not realistically expecting very many submissions – after all, it won’t be long before I need to start finalising content for issue 2, and that doesn’t give people much time to buy the magazine, think about puzzles, draw them up and submit them. So in order to help things get going I’ve approached a few people who regularly create top-quality puzzles of their own and asked them if they’d be happy to contribute a puzzle or two to issue 2. Therefore I’m very pleased to announce that David Millar of The Griddle has agreed to provide a couple of his excellent designs for issue 2. If you take a look at his site you’ll see that he regularly posts a huge variety of different puzzle types, and it will be fantastic to have some of this content to help launch the community section of Sudoku Xtra issue 2.
Website feature-ready
Nov 18th
I’m happy with where the Sudoku Xtra website has got to now, with another update today pushing on all the material I wanted. It will I’m sure need further work when there are multiple issues available, but for now it’s more than good enough I think.
As mentioned yesterday, the most exciting feature (other than being able to view and buy and read about the magazine!) is the new discussion forum. It’s a pity Sudoku Pro never had one, because the old BBC MindGames one (which incidentally featured a large number of my puzzles too) was always great. It would be brilliant if we could make the Sudoku Xtra forums just as good! Here’s hoping…
If you’ve got issue 1 (or even if you haven’t!) please feel free to let people know about it – building up a readership is of course an important part of launching a new magazine, particularly one that won’t be on shop shelves any time soon!
Discussion forums for Sudoku Xtra
Nov 16th
Thanks very much to everyone who’s bought Sudoku Xtra issue 1 so far – I really appreciate it, and thanks also for your great feedback!
I’m still working on adding content to the main Sudoku Xtra site, which of course it was more important to get up and running at all in the first place rather than waiting until it was ‘finished’ to launch, and so today’s big addition is a discussion forum!
Please feel free to continue posting here about Sudoku Xtra if you would prefer, but if there’s anything you’d like to open up for discussion – or just want to chat about a particular puzzle (or even ask for help solving one!) – then the forums are probably the best place to do it.
You don’t need to register on the Sudoku Xtra site in order to post to the forums, but if you don’t you’ll be asked to type in one of those anti-spam image things each time you post – but I’ve made sure they’re very legible, so conversely fingers-crossed there won’t be any nasty problems with spam! (You should see just how much gets caught in the anti-spam message filters for this site alone – it’s quite astonishing!)
Thanks again!
SudokuXtra.com magazine downloads
Nov 14th
Well, www.sudokuxtra.com is now live – live enough that you can now go there and buy the magazine and get it immediately. So what are you waiting for?! As I posted earlier, there’s also a preview copy you can download if you want to check out some of what you’re getting first.
I’ll also be adding more content to sudokuxtra.com over the coming week, including a discussion forum.
Sudoku Xtra website
Nov 14th
Just a quick update to my previous post – there is now a preview of issue 1 available on SudokuXtra.com.
Sudoku Xtra Complete
Nov 13th
Sudoku Xtra issue 1 is now ready! It won’t appear on Amazon.com for up to a week or so – it takes a while for them to update their databases and so on, but it is on Lulu.com already if you want a printed version. For the printed version it will cost £4.99 for UK customers, but Lulu do charge postage and packaging on top of that. (Lulu do however often have discount vouchers, so you might manage to get some money off the total).
The magazine is 44 pages long, each page 8 inches by 10 inches (20cm by 25cm), and with exactly 100 puzzles in. It prints really well on both A4 and Letter paper, either 1-up (one page per sheet) or 2-up (two pages per sheet) as you prefer. There is a small preview on the Lulu site if you’d like to see what you’re getting (or read back through previous posts here too!). If you order the printed Lulu version you will actually get some extra blank pages at the back to make it up to their minimum page count for an A4 publication, so ignore the page count on the Lulu description.
Click here for a printed copy of the magazine: Sudoku Xtra issue 1 on Lulu
I haven’t yet set up the subscriber ordering site (it will be at SudokuXtra.com hopefully within 24 hours), but if you want to get in right away you can click directly on the Paypal buttons below, and then I will email you a PDF version of the magazine within 24 hours. Once the website is up and running you’ll receive the magazine immediately, so this is just temporary for the next day or two.
If you’re in the US or Canada and want a printed copy you have three choices: wait for it to appear on Amazon in a week or more (you might want to do this to get free delivery as part of a larger order), order from Lulu using the link above, or (for the 8″ x 10″ Amazon.com version but without the option of free postage) order a printed copy of Sudoku Xtra from CreateSpace.com instead, who supply the printed copies for Amazon (in fact they’re owned by Amazon too).
However the best option of all for me – the one where I get most money from the sale – is to order a download version and print it yourself. You can print either the whole magazine or just the pages you choose. If you’d like to do this you also have the option to subscribe for a year (12 issues) for the price of 11 issues, if you’re keen! This also insures you against any price rises that might happen in the coming year. Just click one of the four Paypal purchase buttons below.
Note that when buying on Paypal you can click the ‘Continue’ link next to “Don’t have a Paypal account?” to pay directly with a credit card – you don’t need to create a Paypal account if you don’t already have one. The checkout process will say ‘PuzzleMix.com’, which is another of my sites.
| Issue 1 @ £3.99 GBP | Issue 1 @ $5.99 USD |
Or for a 12-issue subscription:
| Issues 1-12 @ £43.89 GBP | Issues 1-12 @ $65.89 USD |
Thanks in advance, and I hope you enjoy the magazine!
Recent Comments