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This question is part of the best-puzzle award series

What are your nominations for the best puzzles, here on Puzzling.SE, of the third quarter ( July / August / September ) 2022?

Suggested guidelines for nomination:

  • Nominate each individual puzzle in a separate answer, so they can be upvoted/downvoted separately.

  • No more than 3 nominations per person.

  • Don't nominate your own puzzles.

  • Before you nominate a puzzle, check to see if someone else has already nominated it. If they have, then add to that nomination as a comment (or edit it) instead of nominating the same puzzle again.

  • In your nomination, explain what it is that (in your opinion) makes the nominated puzzle such a good one.

Some lists to help jog your memory (your nomination doesn't have to be from these lists):

Algorithmically selected "best of":

Best by votes/views:

Meta-meta issues:

Q: Is this kind of thing allowed on SE?
A: Yes, Photography SE and Sci-Fi & Fantasy SE do something very similar.

Q: What's the point?
A1: To highlight and encourage good practice in a way that goes beyond upvotes.
A2: To work towards building a 'hall of fame' of some of the best puzzles on the site (perhaps to reside on a future puzzling.SE blog) - think of it as our 'greatest hits album'.
A3: To prompt members to put forward their own reflections on what makes a high-quality puzzle.

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1 Answer 1

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“IQ” puzzles seem to be flooding this site by Amoz

One of the joys of the Monthly Topic Challenges (and before them, the Fortnightly ones...) is seeing how different puzzle setters interpret the brief. For me personally, this puzzle by @Amoz completely epitomised the spirit of the challenge, and then some.

It undeniably followed the brief, successfully parodying the IQ puzzle genre - and in a really creative and visual way. But (more than that) it really went above and beyond, involving 12 creative enigmatic mini-puzzles and an over-arching metapuzzle to tie them all together.

Each of the mini-puzzles gave a very pleasing head-scratch and a satisfying 'aha' moment when their answers were found, and identifying the secret theme that ran through all of these 'IQ' puzzles brought a smile to my face. A really pleasing puzzle to solve (ably explained by @MOehm in his excellent answer), and clearly very thoughtfully devised and presented - nicely done!

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