A relatively new trend is the world of speed-dating. A large group of eligible singles gather in one place, and spend a few minutes with other people seeking romantic partners. They quickly gauge their interest in each other, then a bell rings, and they move on to the next potential partner. If nothing else, it’s a way to train your social skills in learning to talk to strangers.

So let’s make it a puzzle!

The thing about secret admirers is that they could be anyone. That seems as good a theme as any for a Hitori puzzle. See if you can find the duplicates in each row and column, and mark them as your suitors.

A traditional gift for Valentine’s Day is a bouquet of flowers, usually roses. Rather than gathering a bunch of identical flowers, I thought it would be more interesting to match up pairs of flowers. Connect each pair of identical flowers with orthogonal paths.

One of the most iconic romantic moments in fiction is the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. When I saw the layout of this 2-grid Sudoku puzzle, I knew I had to use that as the background image. There are more ways to overlap a pair of Sudoku grids, but this one just feels right. Enjoy the solve!

Today, we have a “couples” variant of L.I.T.S. Normally, you need to shade 4 cells in each region to place a single tetromino. In Double L.I.T.S., you must shade a total of 8 cells, to place two tetrominoes in each region.