Update: December 2025

 2025 was a very ambitious year for me. I'm especially proud of Puzzletober and mostly proud of the mystery and larger project which were completed back in spring and summer. I enjoy having lofty goals to work towards, though sometimes I worry about biting off more than I can chew. I wonder how that bar is set. My original plan for the Christmas puzzle was to make a 45x45 grid composed of 81 5x5 plots that needed to be placed in the right locations and then divided into 37 zones, each with a different ruleset inspired by a prompt on the calendar, the entirety of which would be traversed by a directed network of looping carolers who could band together, split up, and sometimes cross paths. I got about halfway through writing the rules before realizing it was too complicated even for myself. Instead, I poured the extra energy into making puzzles for my family as presents; every family member received two puzzles I thought they'd enjoy that hinted towards a location to find scraps of paper for a fully-combined meta, ultimately ending in a splitable cash prize. It was very well-received despite any expected frustrations and one of the online puzzles being a little broken. I doubt I'd be as proud if I went forward with and somehow completed my original plan for the huge grid puzzle and didn't find the time to make the personalized ones. I've heard that in a position similar to mine some people feel the need to constantly one-up themselves. Maybe I'm getting there: two of the projects I mentioned in the second sentence incorporate a theme of trying something again and doing it better. But, at the time of writing, I can't think of a way for me to actively get better at puzzlemaking than to continue setting, and when I make something large I think it should be because I'm confident in my ability to explore the scope of the idea. That being said, I know I still have lots of room for improvement, and lately I've been thinking of learning more about art and how to code in a formal language. Perhaps these are the goals I could be setting for next year. I still have large project ideas, but hardly anything concrete about them, and learning presentation techniques should lead to improvement no matter what I end up pursuing. I agree with the mantra of quality over quantity, but a large quantity of good quality is the ideal result. Recently, someone suggested that I should compile all the puzzles I've shared here into a book and sell it. I think if I curated, sorted, and re-presented it, that would be a great fifth anniversary thing.

The following puzzle was made on 12/25 but shared on 12/29. It is a diabolical variant Connections.