Hi!

How's July been treating you? I hope all is well!

This time I'll jump straight to results.
By far the hardest puzzle last week was Friday's. Saturday and Sunday were closer to Tricky compared to it. It wasn't intentional, but it made me realize that having occasional sawtooth pattern in difficulty could be nice. If one day feels way too hard, it can be discouraging to come back the next day. But if there's always a chance that the next day will actually be easier...? It's not something I'll start doing actively, but if a puzzle does turn out to be harder than intended, like Friday, I might make the following day (or two) easier to balance it out. Or not... You'll never know before solving the puzzle!

So, here are the stats. Top 1% / 10% / 50% times, % perfect and % no hints:
Mon 2026-06-29 (Easy): 1m 29s / 2m 17s / 4m 59s / 38% / 66%
Tue 2026-06-30 (Easy): 1m 46s / 2m 44s / 5m 6s / 37% / 76%
Wed 2026-07-01 (Medium): 1m 36s / 2m 26s / 4m 35s / 42% / 83%
Thu 2026-07-02 (Tricky): 2m 50s / 4m 26s / 7m 58s / 29% / 61%
Fri 2026-07-03 (Hard): 3m 52s / 6m 3s / 11m 37s / 23% / 55%
Sat 2026-07-04 (Hard): 2m 42s / 4m 20s / 8m 8s / 33% / 73%
Sun 2026-07-05 (Hard): 2m 45s / 4m 27s / 8m 14s / 24% / 65%

Besides building puzzles, I haven't had much time for other improvements. But I did add one small thing: A pause button! (Sorry if the title scared you. Clues by Sam isn't going on pause). The pause button replaces the "Play tutorial" button, but currently only for logged in users. The assumption is that people who have an account no longer need the tutorial button. I'll consider adding some other way to enable it as well, like a setting, or just checking if you've already completed some puzzles. (However, if you're a fan of the puzzles, you should definitely create an account anyway!)

The pause button will hide the grid and pause the timer. It's effectively the same as closing the page or changing the active tab, which still also pauses it. There's one difference however: The pause view has a way to restart the puzzle.

"But that's cheating!" you might say. Yeah, might be. But I can anyway not prevent you from restarting the puzzle in another browser, so why not make it easier for you to do it with a press of a button. However, results achieved after restarting are not included in the global stats. So don't worry about the stats being more inaccurate in the future!

Alright, let's check out the bonus puzzles. Some of these are actually a bit older puzzles which were never released. I've tweaked them a bit, removing some old deprecated clue types. I'm actually going through some old puzzles, and you might see them in daily puzzles as well. I'm also inspired by the older puzzle, since they have some fun deductions I haven't used in a long time. Hopefully this will bring more variation and excitement to the puzzles!
#1 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/9f138871d9ca
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/2463570cc9cf
#3 Hard - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/c29f579bf814

Another source of inspiration are the community puzzles. I admit it's still challenging to find the really fun ones from all the experimental stuff being created. Checking out the ones with 3 or 4 thumb-ups, with median solve time of about 5 minutes should be a sweet spot for many. Here are some of the best rated ones from last week:
#1 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=70ce57-1b6c2e75ab14f8fb
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=1cf536-8e8320bde17f4dce
#3 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=89fd55-aa71bcb9b893d27f

I'm heading back to my hammock now (mine wasn't stolen, unlike some poor innocents on Sunday). I hope you'll also have a great week!

-Sam