Useful Sudoku Tips and Articles

Once you’re past the “Sudoku beginner” stage, it’s time to ramp up your Sudoku solving skills with some more advanced techniques. Another more advanced Sudoku technique is to focus on part of the grid – just three rows at a time – and methodically work through the numbers 1 through 9 to see if there are any opportunities to solve empty spaces. This technique is important because it enables you to stay clear-headed and focused, and not get distracted by diverting your attention all over the grid. It gives you a repeatable, methodical process for solving Sudoku puzzles. Let’s see how it works.

Solving Sudoku puzzles is a fun mental challenge because this seemingly simple game of nine numbers and 81 spaces is actually filled with nearly infinite complexity. Once you’ve mastered some of the basic Sudoku techniques, if you’re looking for a more advanced challenge, you can use some more complex techniques for solving Sudoku puzzles.

In the early days of Sudoku, the game was played entirely with pen and paper, making for a leisurely experience. Sitting at the breakfast table, with a coffee in one hand and a pen in the other, Sudoku players would work through a puzzle slowly, enjoying every discovery. Oh, how the world has changed! Online Sudoku is as much about how quickly you can solve Sudoku puzzles as it is about enjoying the process of filling in the board. 

In the prior article in this series on how to solve Sudoku puzzles, we had made a few breakthroughs and successfully solved nearly 2/3 of the entire grid. Now let’s see what we can do to keep building on this success.

In the previous article in this series on how to solve Sudoku puzzles, we solved 1/3 of the grid using process of elimination and paying attention to which numbers were missing, and then tying up the loose ends and finishing up where our thought process led us. Now it’s time to look to some different parts of the grid and see what we can see.

In the previous article in this series, we showed how to get started at solving Sudoku puzzles by searching the grid for “low-hanging fruit” and using simple process of elimination skills to identify which numbers need to go in which empty spaces.