Hello,

To shake things up, this time I'll lead with some thoughts on the community puzzles. (Yeah, pretty wild, I know!)

I've just added a setting allowing you to order the community puzzles based on difficulty and recommendations (the number of thumbs-ups the puzzle has). You can now also filter them based on if you've solved them or not. (I'm going to introduce similar options for the daily archive soon as well!)

Many have reported that playing through the community puzzles can be discouraging. Some are not that fun, and the overuse of clues like "Sam has the most innocent neighbours" can make them really tedious to solve. But I feel like the average puzzles are constantly getting better! If you've had bad experiences with them before, I urge you to try sorting them by "Most recommended" and give the top ones a go. Honestly, I feel like many of them are better than the daily puzzles. One day I could perhaps start introducing "guest editors" in the daily rotation... But still many things to iron out before that!

As usual, I've also collected here some of the best community puzzles from last week. I really enjoyed these, and I hope you like them as well. Thanks again to all the creators!
#1 Easy - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=22b521-ccf46c5a5808d0a9
#2 Medium - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=a52d59-0b057ee2ead13df9
#3 Hard - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=9dd43d-2cc25a7c5a33fd9f
#4 Hard - https://cluesbysam.com/s/share/?puzzleId=f9fb73-14a916bf0b0f386d

Now, let's also have a look at last week's daily puzzles!

This time the "blunder of the week" was Zoe in Wednesday's puzzle. Several people reported that you should be able to identify her earlier than allowed. For some reason so many missed that "there's an odd number of innocents above Zoe" doesn't mean the same thing as "there's an odd number of innocents in column D". I don't think there was anything new or special in the scenario, but somehow the exact combination of clues made people forget the obvious.

Despite this oddly common mistake, the perfect solve % for Wednesday wasn't that low, even if the median time was higher than usually for a Wednesday puzzle. And on Sunday over 50% of the solvers used a hint, which is always a rare occurrence. It was truly a Brutal one!

Here are all the puzzles and stats for last week. Top 1% / 10% / 50% solve times, % of perfect solves and % of solves without using any hints:
Mon 2026-10-05 (Easy): 1m 16s / 1m 59s / 4m 13s / 50% / 76%
Tue 2026-10-06 (Medium): 1m 20s / 2m 2s / 4m 9s / 56% / 83%
Wed 2026-10-07 (Tricky): 2m 49s / 4m 30s / 8m 20s / 36% / 63%
Thu 2026-10-08 (Tricky): 2m 14s / 3m 51s / 7m 40s / 35% / 63%
Fri 2026-10-09 (Tricky): 2m 33s / 4m 27s / 8m 50s / 30% / 59%
Sat 2026-10-10 (Hard): 3m 29s / 6m 2s / 12m 4s / 22% / 55%
Sun 2026-10-11 (Brutal): 3m 3s / 5m 44s / 12m 8s / 18% / 48%

And then the weekly bonus puzzles! Hope you like them!
#1 Easy - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/b780610a46ad
#2 Tricky - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/3dd12ecb95f7
#3 Hard - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/f9773b3e3820
#4 Brutal - https://cluesbysam.com/archive/962901444a8e

Now, back to work! I've had many technical setbacks recently, like problems with email services, and they're still not fully resolved. I'm in the middle of some technical transitions, and things keep breaking in most unexpected ways. However, there's light at the end of the tunnel, and it looks like I might soon have time to start ticking off items on my to-do list. Like the bonus puzzle archive... Wish me luck!

-Sam