How to solve Sudoku Puzzles
No matter what level of puzzle you are attempting to solve you need to master the techniques and strategies that will allow you to find and place correct numbers in empty cells.
Watching video tutorials to learn how to solve sudoku puzzles is the best way to quickly become an expert.
For your convenience, I have covered the basics in these two blog posts:
You should be aware there is no right or wrong way to solve a sudoku puzzle. Each player develop her own way. You will develop your own unique style.
There are, however, three steps you should follow:
Step One - analyse your sudoku grid and decide your first move. Whether you decide to go for the number with the highest frequency first, or the region with most given numbers, is up to you.
Step two - After scanning your grid you want to proceed with one of the two sudoku solving strategies.
Initially you want to find the lone number. This is the easy part. When you are not able to prove any more numbers, you move on to the next step.
Step three - In short, step three is to go back to step one and scan your grid again. You have placed some numbers in their cells so you need to do another analysis and decide your next move. If you have not prepared yourself for a more structured approach to solving your puzzle, this may be the time to find a pencil and get ready for some subscript marking.
You may still find lone numbers, but if you are dealing with a medium or difficult puzzle, there may not be any. To be able to move on you must look for numbers appearing in patterns, like "naked pairs".
Secret Tip
If you are stuck and can not find more numbers, it may be your brain is playing a trick on you. Your brain is trained to read. Your scanning pattern will in most cases look like your reading pattern. That is - english readers typically scan from top left corner of the grid down along the left side. You do some horizontal scans from left to right as you move down the grid. Your Pattern looks like F or E.
If this is the case - you are missing half the grid and may be half the solutions.
Train your brain to look for solutions from all directions. Horizontal - from left to right and right to left. Vertical - from top to bottom and bottom to top.
