Hi there!

Did you already solve today's puzzle? Then you must also be wondering, is stealing jet planes really considered a crime? How about playing "I spy with my little eye..."? Some days there's no crime at all, and then one day the criminals steal Earth.

Is there no rhyme or reason to what's going on in the daily puzzles?
The answer is simple: No. But I hope you like them!

Writing the quips is a lot of fun, but also takes time. Some days I spend more time on the flavour text than the puzzle itself. And some days my brain just refuses to come up with a fun crime, so the criminals end up playing silly games.

Is it all worth it? I like to think it is. Based on all the lovely feedback I'm receiving, sounds like a lot of you are enjoying them. I also know there are many who never read them. Which is absolutely fine! If you'd rather focus on the puzzle, there's a setting for making them less visible. I recently introduced a "dimmed" option to further hide them. Please check out the Settings page to enable it!

Personally I think the flavour text, the quips, are a big part of the puzzle. I won't be leaving them out from the daily puzzle. I'd love to have them in bonus puzzles as well, but unfortunately I don't have the bandwidth for that. I've also considered having more daily puzzles of varying difficulty, but my daily creativity for the texts is hitting a limit.

So, to shed some light on what YOU think of all this, I've created yet another poll! Only two simple questions. Thank you in advance for your response.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdMt0wKb0ZJc4YnrTSp4D0mTWdAUZ-NvtrDZ5SoHYm73l-Z_Q/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Alright, let's have a look at last week's puzzles. How did it go?
It was an odd week. Monday was slightly harder than intended, followed by puzzles easier than intended. There was almost no increase in difficulty from Monday to Wednesday. But then cometh Thursday, introducing one of the trickiest Tricky puzzles to date. Only 15% had a perfect solve! I had to tone it down a bit for Friday. For Saturday and Sunday I ramped the difficulty back up. I even introduced a Brutal puzzle for Sunday. Based on the times, this seems to have been an accurate rating. But based on a lot of feedback, sounds like Saturday was still harder than Sunday. The % of hints needed suggests the same. So even if the median solve time was climbing throughout the week, feels like it was quite the roller coaster. What a strange week!

Top 1% / 10% / 50% solve times / Perfect % / No Hints %
Mon 2026-06-01 (Easy): 1m 28s / 2m 16s / 4m 22s / 52% / 77%
Tue 2026-06-02 (Medium): 1m 33s / 2m 20s / 4m 25s / 55% / 83%
Wed 2026-06-03 (Medium): 1m 56s / 2m 55s / 5m 19s / 43% / 79%
Thu 2026-06-04 (Tricky): 3m 11s / 5m 11s / 9m 26s / 15% / 57%
Fri 2026-06-05 (Hard): 3m 3s / 4m 58s / 9m 9s / 24% / 64%
Sat 2026-06-06 (Hard): 3m 2s / 5m 27s / 11m 22s / 18% / 48%
Sun 2026-06-07 (Brutal): 3m 49s / 6m 38s / 13m 42s / 18% / 53%

Let's see if I got the ratings better for the bonus puzzles. I'm unsure about the last one. On paper it's Evil, but re-solving it just now, I find it oddly enjoyable. Well, I hope you enjoy it as well!

#1 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/8986f219be08
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/ea7b8758b455
#3 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/e7ec4700d5fa
#4 Evil - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/83b5afef1c81

If you're craving for more, as usual, please check out the daily archive or the puzzle packs. Your support is truly appreciated!

Happy solving!

-Sam