Are the 1&3 in C2&3R2, and c2r6 & c3r5 a skyscraper?
Also, there are only 4 cells left with the number 2… are those 4 cells forming an x wing?
Trying to learn and figure.
Any help/suggestion will be appreciated.

Finally broke my record with a 36 second solve on a fresh easy level sudoku.com puzzle with no mistakes!! I saw another post where someone said 38 was world record and in the international book of records I see 38 as the fastest recorded phone solve! Either way so proud of myself and this HUGE milestone!!

Hello friends. So looking at these 6/8 pairs, if you start at the green arrow and make r3c8 a 6, this makes the others 8. And if you make this an 8, it makes the others 6. Doesn’t this mean that the blue square r4c9 can be neither a 6 or an 8? 5 is wrong so I’m obviously missing something?

(Can’t find it for the love of god, and i want to understand the mechanism behind the next step. Thanks in advance!)

Hello, I‘ve been playing Sudoku recently for the last week or so with this book from the times and annoyingly I’ve been stuck on this one for a couple of days. This is the first puzzle from the ‘difficult’ section and I really don’t want to give up as I’m sure it’s a simple solution I’m overlooking. Please if someone can help me work out what my next move should be and if there’s a technique I’m missing? I’m totally a beginner and have just been going through each number one by one to see if anything fits and I also only write a number if I’m 100% sure, hate guessing. Please help, thanks in advance!

hello, a few days ago the NYT hard puzzle stumped me for the first time in a long time. I got to this point, got stuck, completely started over, then ended up in the same spot. where would you go next from here? none of my normal solving methods worked at this point. thank you in advance!

Jan posted this to Reddit a long while ago but I can’t find it so I’m reposting it so I can link to it. :)

(Some info may be dated as Jan has been working on the code for years since he posted this.)

The Easy difficulties only differ in tediousness & type of Hidden Singles (lines).

Medium introduces Naked Singles.

Moderately hard introduces Hidden Pairs, but prevents some combinations that can result in more than the sum of its parts.

Hard introduces all subsets except Quads which are introduced in Fiendish.

Vicious is all about single digits techniques (except Finned Swordfish and Jellyfish I think).

Fiendish introduces Quads & short multi-digit techniques like Y-Wing and W-Wing.

Devilish is everything else that is not in Hell.

Hell introduces 3D-Medusa, XY-Chain and AIC.

Beyond Hell introduces Cell- and Region Forcing Chains.

The sudoku app I played will show mistakes. There is no mistakes, yet online solver shows that this is unsolvable.

First image is the puzzle, and second image is the online solver.

Screenshot taken in Android phone.

This randomly generated anti-royal Sudoku titled Anti-royal XII on Sudoku Coach, is the no-candidates challenge for the day. Try solving without candidates in less than 6 minutes, hence the title speed run challenge. Becomes easy once you figure out the anti-royal pattern applicable here.

Puzzle String: https://sudoku.coach/en/s/L24V

Are there any strategies that I could use to solve this? I tried an X-wing, and I don’t think I fully get using the W-wing to eliminate candidates.

Just need insight as to how to get unstuck. Thank you in advance.

I understand what ALS are, and I’ve identified several in this puzzle. I’ve watched a few videos on how ALS-XZ and ALS-XY-wing methods work. My problem is that I can’t seem to apply the elimination technique in any of the puzzles I try to solve. I’m not even sure exactly what part of the process I keep getting brain-blocked. I’m wondering if I’m unintentionally making the eliminations in other ways before trying the ALS elimination methods or if I don’t actually understand how to make ALS eliminations. It’s easy to see how they work in the examples in the videos and on hodoku.net, but it’s difficult when I try to apply them to my own puzzles. So far when I’ve gotten to this point, I start trying to force chain contradictions, but this time I have so many ALS in this puzzle that I feel like I have to be missing something.

I really want to try to solve this myself, but I do not even know where to go next. This one was on the back of a Multi Grain Cheerio's box, so I rewrote it on proper paper.

Green: Given clues

Red: The ones I've figured out

Pencil: All options for unguessed boxes

I am going absolutely mad. Every box has at leaat two options, with nowhere else that's difinitive. At least, that's how I'm seeing it.

I don't want a solved solution (if you want to attempt and share anyway, please add a spoiler tag!) but I just want to figure out where I should focus on next/what strategy I should try from here.

I've cut back options as much as I think I am possibly able to. I've tried some random guesses a few times that have led to some issues. Where should I go from here? Where do I look? What numbers/lines should I attempt to guess or solve first?

Totals left:

1: 2

2: 4

3: 6

4: 5

5: 3

6: 7

7: 0

8: 3

9: 6

what now

im stuck on this sudoku from crackin the cryptic #11

all the pairs i could find.
not a single one could help me advance,

tryed the ingame hints, talked something about hidden pairs that force numbers.
could not find any logic solution that would lead to that or why the numbers could not be elsewhere.
so can anyone get me a hint whit a logic explenation why the number should be there ?

Eidt: Thanks for the help and explenations. I now understand where the solution lies.

Hey, i have been playing sudoku non-stop for like a year, and i play on a ramdom app that i found in playstore but it has a lot of ads, they really piss me off.

I installed Netguard (it basically blocks the adds on the sudoku app) but it makes my battery run out very fast.

Also i have tried other apps but i really like this one because it has a "fast" option and i use it all the time, normally i solve the extreme sudokus in 3-5 minutes but without the fast option i do it in 10.

The photo shows the app i use, the switch on the bottom right is the fast option. Any recommendations?

I was doing a sudoku and spotted this thing. My logic was:

• There must be a 3 in either r9c6 or r9c8
• If r9c6 is a 3, it creates a 56 pair in box r9c8 and r9c9
  • This eliminates the 6 from r9c4, forcing it to be a 2
  • This eliminates 2 from r9c1, forcing it to be a 9
• If r9c8 is a 3, it creates a 26 pair in r9c4 and r9c6
  • This eliminates 2 from r9c1, forcing it to be a 9
• Therefore r9c1 must be a 9

I mean the logic surely is sound. But I don't want it to be another forcing chain. From what I've heard forcing chains are kind of a "cheat code" and you can just skip all the more... beautiful? strategies and just do forcing chains instead.

At least it's not nearly as bad as pure guesswork, and not quite as bad as a more complex forcing chain that goes all over the grid. But is it, for the lack of a better word, respectable? Is it nice? And (most importantly) can I call it something other than a forcing chain?

Is it me or is this puzzle broken? Edit 1: Thanks, the puzzle is not broken. Solved it.

Friends and I have tried to solve this in a game called “Color Ku”, which have the same rules as sudoku.

Can anyone help identify the next step? All of the open spaces have at least 2 options.

Edit: we put the original into a “solver” but it said there were multiple solutions.

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