Level : Medium

Below the Sudoku board you will find discussions about the techniques used to solve this Sudoku. Use the buttons to the right and left of the board to step through.

Techniques used in this Sudoku:

  1. Box Row Column (see Easy Sudoku)
  2. Triangulation (see Easy Sudoku)
  3. Last Free Cell (see Easy Sudoku)
  4. Obvious Singles (see Easy Sudoku)
  5. Notes

This is the strategy we will use:

  1. We start with Box Row Column and Triangulation.
  2. No solutions? Look for Last Free Cell.
  3. No solutions? Go back to step 1.
  4. No solutions in steps 1 and 2? Use Notes and look for Obvious Singles.

 

Box Row Column and Triangulation:

Box Row Column and Triangulation:

Box Row Column:

Box Row Column:

Box Row Column and Triangulation:

Box Row Column:

Box Row Column and Triangulation:

Box Row Column:

Box Row Column and Triangulation:

Box Row Column:

Box Row Column:

Box Row Column:

Last Free Cell:

Box Row Column:

We are out of options. Time to use Notes.

To create notes, we search for all possible solutions for each free cell. Notes are very tedious and error-prone. So instead of writing notes in all the free cells, we wrote notes for boxes 1 and 2, which have only 2 free cells each. There are two possible solutions for each cell, so these notes won't help much.

We have added notes in boxes 5 and 8. We now have two cells (E4, H1) with only one possibility (Obvious Singles). But before we write these numbers, we should check that there are no other possible numbers in these cells. You shouldn't trust your notes blindly, because it's very easy to make mistakes when writing them.

Obvious Singles

1 in E4 and H5. New cells available!

Obvious Singles

7 in A5 and 4 in I6. New cells available!

Obvious Singles

1 in A6 and 4 in E4. No more cells with a single value. Time to add notes in boxes 7, and 9.

Obvious Singles

Only one cell (E8).

Obvious Singles

Write the number and we now have more cells available.

Obvious Singles

Write the numbers and 7 new cells appear!

Write the numbers...

new cells...

Write the numbers...

and we're done!