Are you familiar with Finagle's law?

In the last newsletter I announced that I will be on a plane when the day changes and the new puzzle is revealed. It meant that I wouldn't be available to fix things if anything goes wrong. But nothing ever goes wrong, right?

If you don't count harmless typing mistakes, the last error in a puzzle was in October 2025, when I accidentally turned a mech into a clown to pull off a joke, but unfortunately that mech was required for a deduction. Earlier this year we had a close call when using a hint highlighted the wrong person. But besides these incidents, the puzzle has worked as intended: There has always been a logical next step, and all logical choices have been allowed.

Now, many know Murphy's law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
There's also a corollary to this called Finagle's law: "Anything that can go wrong, will — at the worst possible moment."
Knowing this, I was nervous to board that plane.

And what happened? You know it, the puzzle on Tuesday September 1 had a historic logic error!

I think Murphy felt bad for me, so the plane landed a bit early and I was online soon after the puzzle went live. But by then several people had noticed the error and kindly reported it. Luckily the problem was simple and the puzzle was soon fixed.

What was the error, and how did it happen?

Just like with all previous errors, it was caused by last minute changes to the puzzle without running it through the validator. I noticed a clue was unnecessarily long and made it shorter. "The only innocent in between Vince and me is below Gus" became "The only innocent above Vince is below Gus". Try replacing Barb's clue here with the latter and see if you can spot the error.

So now we got to witness what an error in Clues by Sam looks like. It's the first one in almost a year, and let's hope it's the last one you'll see!

Did the error affect the results? I don't think so... Only a fraction of you had time to witness it, and many didn't even spot the problem. Also it was wrong in such an obvious way that it was easy to guess what the intended clue was. The median time on Tuesday was higher than on Wednesday, but I think Wednesday was just easier than intended. Otherwise, nothing special stands out. Weekend puzzles were obviously very hard but nothing crazy.

Mon 2026-08-31 (Easy): 1m 32s / 2m 20s / 4m 31s / 44% / 81%
Tue 2026-09-01 (Medium): 1m 54s / 2m 58s / 6m 15s / 32% / 66%
Wed 2026-09-02 (Medium): 1m 41s / 2m 41s / 5m 32s / 44% / 77%
Thu 2026-09-03 (Tricky): 2m 37s / 4m 14s / 8m 44s / 35% / 64%
Fri 2026-09-04 (Tricky): 2m 59s / 4m 55s / 9m 36s / 28% / 56%
Sat 2026-09-05 (Hard): 3m 15s / 5m 33s / 11m 16s / 16% / 49%
Sun 2026-09-06 (Hard): 3m 7s / 5m 33s / 11m 19s / 19% / 51%

If you're new to this newsletter, you might have subscribed since I promised "weekly bonus puzzles". And indeed, here they are!
#1 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/136be48b235d
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/d367b35963ba
#3 Brutal - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/f403120799d6

And here are some of the highest rated community puzzles. The rating is based on how many used the "Recommend" button after completing them through the Community Archive.
This time we have two puzzles by the same creator! You can identify the creator by the first letters in the puzzle's id. In this case the creator with 2 puzzles is 89fd55. Allowing creators to pick a name instead of an ID like this is up there on my to-do list. Also giving the puzzles a more recognizable name would be nice...
They are all fun, but this week #4 is my personal favourite (I landed in top 25% with one silly mistake). I was going to rank it Brutal based on the median times, but I had too much fun solving it to call it Brutal. I hope you like it too!
#1 Easy - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=a8611a-ed3553073b490374
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=f9fb73-f00a96ec06140968
#3 Hard - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=89fd55-9ff9dc98c59c75fa
#4 Hard - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=89fd55-69960ebcaf633cbd

That's all my updates this week. Thank you for subscribing and being a part of Clues by Sam! And remember to share today's puzzle with friends and family, since Monday's are always the easiest ones! In case you lost the link to the daily puzzle, it's here: https://cluesbysam.com

-Sam