New Top Hat Puzzle Puts Fresh Twist on Sudoku and Offers Daily Puzzles Online

Murray, Utah – Top Hat Puzzle is pleased to announce the release of its new Top Hat puzzles, which put an exciting twist on Sudoku. The new puzzles are named after the uniquely shaped pattern found on each corner.

Instructions for playing Top Hat puzzles are simple: Fill four diagonal, four hat, and four corner patterns with the numbers 1 through 6. However, the puzzles challenge players in a uniquely creative way.

“Top Hat puzzles are small (24 tiles), quick (two to twelve minutes), a little bent and twisted just enough to provide a quick Sudoku fix that also stretches the mind,” said their inventor, Gary Francis Stout.

Top Hat puzzles take up only a small amount of print space, which makes them an ideal tool for stimulating newspaper subscriptions. Electronic versions are also available online at www.tophatpuzzle.com. The interactive versions are especially coded for play online, offering new puzzles daily and a variety of special options. Site visitors can choose practice puzzles or puzzles from the previous day. Players can enable options, such as "Show Conflicts" which prevents wrong entries and flashes to indicate what cells are in conflict, and "Auto fill," which indicates all numbers that don’t conflict with other cells. They can also show a timer and the solved puzzle for a quick view of the solution.

Online Top Hat players can also check the scoreboard to see how they did in the previous day’s daily puzzle competition. The daily puzzle generally presents more of a challenge for players, as it can’t be paused to allow for more time to think and strategize. “You are free to make mistakes as you strive to quickly solve the puzzle and post your time on the scoreboard,” Stout said. “Easy puzzles start with 9 cells, medium with 7, and difficult puzzles start with only 5 known cells.”

Stout also created a prototype Ten Gallon Sombrero puzzle based on the Top Hat model, and a Sequential Sudoku Puzzle, in which circles and ellipses are used to indicate the presence of a sequence. “When a number appears in the circle, that number will also be part of the indicated sequence,” he explained. “This is a new technique of hinting at inter-cell relationships similar to Greater Than Sudoku.”

Gary Stout is not new to the world of invention. He is a veteran inventor with a history of creating original products that boggle the mind. Previously, he invented a magic lamp (Patent #5473525), which he converted to a magic Christmas tree ornament when the next Christmas rolled around. These inventions are based on the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't effect of a one-way mirror. In addition, Stout has created and licensed a proprietary new design that displays personal photographs. He has also created a daunting Five Star puzzle, which as of yet has no satisfactory solution.

In his professional work, Stout’s job involves maintaining Radar sites at remote mountain top locations on the Utah Test and Training Range. In addition, one weekend a month and a few weeks each year, he trains fellow airmen of the 299 RCS Utah Air National Guard.

To learn more about Top Hat puzzles, visit www.tophatpuzzle.com.