Happy New Year!
As I post this explainer, on 1/1/2026, we’re more than halfway through the 18th year of this daily word puzzle blog. For years now, I’ve experimented with annual themes, trying to tie daily puzzles together. This year’s posts continue that effort. Keep reading to understand the annual theme and the weekly subthemes. They may not be obvious at first glance!
- 2016 was the year of the vowel—almost all daily puzzles above size 6x6 used all of AEIOU.
- 2017 expanded on the idea of including one combination of letters in a bunch of words, using the 3-letter abbreviations for each month (JAN, FEB, MAR, etc.). Almost every weekday Hidden Word Sudoku puzzle contained the three letters of the name of the month when the puzzle posted.
- 2018 I went the opposite way from 2016: Each daily puzzle tried to minimize the number of the five common vowels. You might have noticed: A lot of puzzle words contained ‘y’ used as another vowel.
- 2019 took that effect another step: Every weekday puzzle word contained 'y'.
- 2020 played off the spelling of the year itself. Every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles of size 6x6 and larger contained the three letters 'twe', spread out in the word; puzzles of length 4x4 and 5x5 contained at least two of those three letters.
- 2021 took the same approach as 2020, playing off the spelling of the year itself, but with even more success. Every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles contained the three letters 'one', in some order.
- 2022 attempted the same approach as 2021, playing off the spelling of the year itself, but with less success in the 4x4 and 5x5 puzzles. Every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles contained the three letters 'two'—except many 4x4 and 5x5 puzzles contained only two of those three letters. Oh, well.
- 2023 kept this “year number” theme going, playing off the spelling of the year. Every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles contained at least three of the four letters thre somewhere in the word.
- 2024 yet again played off the spelling of the year. Every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles contained at least three of the four letters four somewhere in the word.
- 2025 continued to play off the spelling of the year: Every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles contained at least three of the four letters five somewhere in the word.
- 2026 keeps it going: Almost every puzzle word or phrase in the Monday-through-Friday puzzles contains at least two of the three letters six somewhere in the word.
Here’s the weekly posting schedule, which has been the same for the past 10 years now: The week starts out easy Monday and reaches fiendish Friday.
- Monday: 4x4 and 6x6 Word Sudoku puzzles
- Tuesday: 9x9 Word Sudoku puzzle
- Wednesday: 8x8 Word Sudoku puzzle
- Thursday: 10x10 Word Sudoku puzzle
- Friday: 5x5 and 7x7 Word Sudoku puzzles
As you know, normally Sudoku puzzle sizes are not based on primes; the internal box (rectangle or square) has width and length, and the outside dimension of a puzzle is the product of these two integers. Relaxing the requirement that the internal shapes be rectangular removes this restriction. But that doesn't make prime-size puzzles easy!
- Saturday:A day of bad puns—paraprosdokians. A paraprosdokian is wordplay where the latter part of a statement forces you to reinterpret the first part. The phrase intentionally leads you in one direction—misleads you into thinking one way—and then abruptly changes direction, ending with the unexpected twist. And often, a big groan. Because paraprosdokians come in two parts, I present each part as a separate quote, each revealed by solving its own set of word Sudoku puzzles
- Sunday: (The Challenge) I will continue the Sunday pun theme, telling really awful puns. Each challenges you to spell out a (truly pun-ishing) quote by solving one or more small (4x4 or 6x6) word Sudoku puzzles. Finally, every other Sunday you’ll also get a 12x12 Hidden Word Sudoku puzzle. Sundays are truly a challenge!
In all, I plan to post more than 800 Word Sudoku puzzles in 2026.
I’ve also produced dozens of books of Word Sudoku puzzles—more are in the works—that test your Word Sudoku skills while hopefully providing you hours of fun, including many
“Aha!” moments—and, undoubtedly, rueful groans.
Please visit my amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/davethompsonapr. The puzzles in the books have not appeared in the blog.
This has been a long,
long affair: I started
Magic Word Square in 2008—more than 15,000 posts and more than 2.8 million page views ago—to explore the fun of mixing words and anagrams, letters and logic. I hope you enjoy solving these puzzles as much as I do constructing them. As always, I invite your comments—please let me know what you think using the blog comment feature.
Thanks,
--Dave
All puzzles and text contained in this blog are copyright © 2008-2026, David H. Thompson. All rights reserved. Please tell your puzzle-loving friends to follow this blog. Thank you!
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