Giant

About Giant

Giant is the big sudoku in Mind Loft's daily lineup on mindloftdaily.com. The rules are the classic ones at a larger size: sixteen rows, sixteen columns and sixteen 4x4 boxes, and each of them must hold sixteen symbols exactly once. The symbols are the digits 1 to 9 followed by the letters A to G. With 256 squares, a board is close to three times the size of a 9x9 grid, so it suits a slow coffee or an evening more than a quick break.

A new board arrives at midnight US Eastern Time and is the same for everyone. Mind Loft says every board has a single solution that can be reached by deduction, with no guessing. The difficulty climbs across the week through the number of printed clues: 128 on Monday, falling to 96 on Saturday, and 90 for the Sunday Edition.

Wrong entries are not marked as you play, so checking your own work is part of the puzzle. A clean solve scores a perfect 10, and the daily leaderboard ranks clean solves by time. The pad has notes, undo, erase and a hint button, and on a phone you can play the full board or zoom into one quarter at a time.

Giant runs in the browser with no app and no account needed, and past boards can be played from the archive. Players who like the size but want something shorter can try Mind Loft's 9x9 Suds or its 6x6 Sixes.

How to play Giant

1. Open mindloftdaily.com/giant and press Start to see today's 16x16 board.
2. Pick an empty square and tap a symbol on the pad: the digits 1 to 9 or the letters A to G.
3. Make sure every row, every column and every 4x4 box ends up with all sixteen symbols exactly once.
4. Turn on Notes to pencil in the candidates for a square while you work out which one fits.
5. Fill all 256 squares; a board with no mistakes scores 10 and your time places you on the day's leaderboard.

Screenshots

Tips

• Treat the letters as numbers 10 to 16 in your head; scanning for a missing symbol is easier when you count through them in a fixed order.
• Start with the symbols that already appear most often on the board: the small counts on the pad show how many of each are left to place.
• Mistakes are not flagged, so check each row or box as you complete it rather than at the end.
• On a phone, zoom into one quarter of the board at a time to keep the squares at full size.
• Monday's board prints the most clues; play the early-week boards first if 16x16 is new to you.

Questions