Dr Gareth Moore

Sudoku Xtra – The Magazine for Japanese Puzzle Fans

Today someone commented on my blog here about how Sudoku Pro subscribers who get in touch about their magazines are being told that Accolade Puzzles Ltd, the publisher, is no more, so I thought I should comment.

As a freelance puzzle author I get commissioned by a wide range of different publishers, and I don’t work (and never have worked) for Accolade Puzzles, the publishers of Sudoku Pro magazine, so I don’t know any of the gory details. What I do know is that sadly Accolade Puzzles have ceased trading and entered formal insolvency. I also see today that all mention of them is gone from their parent site, Accolade Publishing, and that the Total Puzzles brand site which covered all of their magazines now redirects visitors to the appointed insolvency practitioners

This is very sad news for me, because I always thought of Sudoku Pro as ‘my’ magazine – I wrote literally all of the content for it, from the front cover to the back cover, and not just that but all the little things too such as the puzzles instructions, hints and tips for the puzzle of the month and so on.  Every 4 weeks I sent all of the content off to the publisher and I always enjoyed receiving the magazine in the post, and trying out many of my puzzles anew.

It wasn’t marketing hype when the magazine claimed that the puzzles were hand-made – every single puzzle in the magazine was either entirely hand-made or had a significant manual component. None of it was churned out of an off-the-shelf Sudoku generator, unlike (it will hardly surprise you to know) just about every other Sudoku magazine you can buy. (My top tip for Sudoku puzzles is only to buy content with a named author on it!)  If you’re going to play puzzles created with a free generator someone found on the internet, you may as well print them yourself rather than pay someone else for the privilege. Sudoku Pro was never like that, and indeed the final issues had very few regular Sudoku puzzles in them at all – the majority were variants or other Japanese puzzles.

The final issue, number 50, was available digitally online, so for those who didn’t receive a printed copy you could try checking at the digital version site, if you had it bookmarked (I didn’t, so I can’t tell you what the URL was).  I’m afraid I’ve no idea if any printed copies were ever sent out, but I have a PDF I downloaded from the subscriber’s website just last week so I have a copy of issue 50 myself at least. I’d also sent all of the content for issue 51.

I suppose if the magazine was to end then issue 50 was a good number to reach. Of course I suppose it’s always possible that someone will buy up the assets and continue publishing the magazines, but I have literally no idea how likely that is. I thought their titles were way above the average puzzle mush on the market, and they certainly didn’t deserve to go under.

But this now leaves me with a big magazine gap in my life, and so on to my new project: Sudoku Xtra.

I’ve decided to start publishing a monthly puzzle magazine myself, initially along the lines of Sudoku Pro but then hopefully branching out to a wider range of logic and number puzzle content, and with even more variety.  I’m also hoping to encourage other puzzle authors to contribute.  The magazine won’t be essentially just a UK publication like Sudoku Pro but will be available worldwide for download from a website which  I’m in the process of setting up, and also in a printed version from Amazon.com. The printed version will cost $9.99, to cover the on-demand printing cost, but the download version will most likely be just $4.99. In UK pounds that’s about £2.99, which is pretty much what Sudoku Pro cost. It will be formatted in large page format, at 8″ x 10″, so Amazon-delivered copies will be much larger than book size, and it will  nicely fill the page size for both worldwide (A4) and US (Letter) printers.  If it is successful enough then I will also make it available for order in printed form from Amazon.co.uk and many other sites (an up-front cost I am avoiding until I know I can cover it!). At least to start with it will be entirely black and white, so anyone can print it without trouble.

If you’re a puzzle author and would like to contribute, please get in touch. Initially any money made will go to cover costs so I can’t offer any payment for content other than a free PDF copy, but hopefully I’ll be able to grow the magazine both in terms of readership and content and it will be a worthwhile thing to contribute to and indeed receive. And then going forward, who knows?

Also if this is something you’d be interested in buying then please post here too with any comments, including what sort of puzzles you’d like to see and how many puzzles you’d expect in the magazine (Sudoku Pro had 67 puzzles, plus the four brain workouts on the back page). I am assuming that a monthly (12 issues/year) format would be best, although without any distributor schedule to keep to this could be flexible and shift around slightly.

Perhaps the (probable) end of one magazine can also signal the beginning of something new?