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Sudoku is the little game of logic that has captured the nation's heart. But if the array of numbers and squares looks like Greek to you, there's no reason to be intimidated—this page will show you how simple it is to learn How to Play Sudoku.
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Categories
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Sudoku is the little game of logic that has captured the nation's heart. But if the array of numbers and squares looks like Greek to you, there's no reason to be intimidated—this page will show you how simple it is to learn How to Play Sudoku.
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Strategies
- More advanced Sudoku puzzles will be hard to solve by sticking to a single method. Here are some things to try if you get stuck.
Change What You're Looking At
- Think you're stuck? Think again. Many times when you think you've hit the wall, there are actually solutions right in front of you that you've simply overlooked.
- If you're feeling overwhelmed, only look at rows for a while. Or try only looking at boxes or columns. This can help get your mind focused without meandering!
- Change your row/column/box perspective. Often you'll find yourself agonizing over a particular space in a column without realizing that you already have 8 or 9 spaces of the row filled in.
- Move to a new area of the puzzle. If you feel like you can't go any further in the lower right hand corner, start looking for solutions in the upper left. A breakthrough in one area of the grid can lead to solutions in others.
Grab a Pencil
- You're probably already using one if you're not playing online, but you can complete any Sudoku puzzle with a few erasable notes.
- If you've narrowed down a spot to only a couple digits, write them both down for a reference. Then you won't have to memorize all the possibilities and it will help give you a visual reference while working the puzzle out.
- You can solve just about any Sudoku by writing all nine digits in each blank space (you can also use dots as explained in the Sudoku Wikipedia article).
- When a number is eliminated from a given space, erase it. When only one number remains, that is the answer.
- If a number appears as a possibility in only one space of any box, row, or column (even if it's not the final number remaining in said space), it is the answer.
- If any box/row/column contains two spaces with matching pairs of numbers (like in this Howstuffworks example in which they show two spaces in the row containing only the possibilities of 5 and 6), those two numbers will definitely be in those spaces, although you don't know in which order. Therefore, you can eliminate the possibility of those numbers from any other space in that box/row/column.
- Using this method is a surefire way to complete a puzzle unless it is designed to be impossible to solve without guessing.
- If you don't feel like writing all those digits, just focus on one area.
- Pick a row with a few blank spots.
- Write down the remaining numbers in each blank space, eliminating those which cannot work.
- Use the same logic as the previous step (a number appears only once, matching pairs) to fill in some of the blanks.
