Mr Brain Printable Puzzles

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Your Next Puzzle

Clear introductions to ingenious pencil-and-paper puzzles, their histories, and the ideas that help you make your first deduction.

The series

7 invitations to discover your next favourite puzzle

  1. Your Next Puzzle: Hitori

    While I’m writing this, the World Sudoku Championship and World Puzzle Championship are taking place in Kolkata, India. Some of the best puzzle solvers in the world have gathered there to measure their skills against each other. So if you haven’t checked it out yet, take a look at how your country’s representatives are doing in the individual and team competitions.

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  2. Your Next Puzzle: Futoshiki

    This month's next puzzle is Futoshiki. The puzzle originated in Japan, and its name translates to “inequality,” which is kind of the main idea behind the whole puzzle. Its creation is credited to Tamaki Seto in 2001. Within a few years, Futoshiki found its way into newspapers outside Japan and became a well known logic puzzle. You will also sometimes find it under the names Unequal or More or Less.

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    Futoshiki takes the simple rules of a Latin square and adds inequality signs to the grid. With this small addition, it creates a puzzle that can become surprisingly challenging.

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  3. Your Next Puzzle: Tectonic

    Next in the Your Next Puzzle series is the Tectonic grid. Originally called Nanba Burokku, it was invented by Japanese puzzle inventor Naoki Inaba. In different magazines you will find it under the names Tectonic, Suguru, Number Blocks, but I know it as Tectonic, so I will use this name in this article. This puzzle with simple rules is another example of how simple rules can create a fun and challenging puzzle.

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  4. Your Next Puzzle: Star Battle

    In this article in the series, we are moving past the classic grids filled with numbers or letters and shooting straight for the stars. Star Battle shares some logical DNA with the puzzles we have previously explored, but it shifts your attention away from the symbols placed in the grid and towards the relationships between rows, columns, and regions.

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    As far as I can determine, the history of Star Battle began in the Netherlands in 2003. That makes it younger than many classic logic puzzles, but after more than two decades, it can hardly be called new. The puzzle is generally credited to Dutch puzzle designer Hans Eendebak, who created it for the 12th World Puzzle Championship, held at the Papendal Sports Complex in Arnhem.

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  5. Your Next Puzzle: Skyscrapers

    What makes Skyscrapers truly captivating is the “Aha!” moment that comes with every successful deduction. It is less about guessing and more about building a logical bridge across the grid, where each clue acts as a constraint that slowly reveals the hidden cityscape.

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    For this instalment of Your Next Puzzle, I picked Skyscrapers. This puzzle originated in Japan and is usually credited to Masanori Natsuhara, who created it in 1992. It first appeared in the Japanese puzzle magazine Puzzler, and it received early international exposure through the 1st World Puzzle Championship in New York City that same year. The puzzle is also known by names such as Towers, Building City Puzzle, Building Puzzle, Building Heights, and sometimes Skyline puzzle.

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  6. Your Next Puzzle: The Prequel

    We started Your Next Puzzle on the assumption that there is a vast universe of logic puzzles waiting to be discovered. But as we explore deeper paths, it would be unfair not to pause and pay homage to the king that started it all.

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    Sudoku is the phenomenon that truly popularized deductive grid logic worldwide. It has filled countless puzzle books, sparked global competitions, and kept millions of pencils sharp for decades.

    Whether you are a seasoned solver or just looking for a quick logic reset, this is a deep dive into the underlying mechanics of the world’s favorite grid, its wildest variations, and how you can get your hands on a custom, hand-crafted variety pack today.

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  7. Your Next Puzzle: Easy as ABC

    This is the first part of what I hope will become a series of introductions to different types of logic puzzles, complete with small tutorials on how to start so you can map out your own solving strategies. Everyone is unique, and everyone's brain works differently. There is no "one-size-fits-all" strategy when it comes to solving these puzzles, but the starting points are quite often the same.

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    The first puzzle in this series is “Easy as ABC,” though in my own collections, I often call it “First Sight.” I sometimes get asked why I use my own custom names instead of the more common ones. The answer is simple: I am always aiming to create a story around these puzzles. I want to connect them into a cohesive experience rather than just dumping a random collection of grids on you (though, when time runs tight, it admittedly turns out that way sometimes!).

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