Medium Sudoku (Metro)

About Medium Sudoku (Metro)

Medium Sudoku is one of the free puzzles on the Metro website, the UK newspaper's puzzles section. Metro runs three sudoku levels side by side, Easy, Medium and Hard, and this page is the middle one: a classic 9 by 9 grid with fewer starting digits than the easy level, so you need a few more steps of reasoning before the grid opens up.

Metro says its free puzzles run Monday to Friday. On a weekday the grid loads straight under the Rules, Hint and Check buttons, with a number pad beside it, and it plays without an account. At the weekend the space shows an offer for Puzzles+, Metro's paid bundle of weekend puzzles and prize competitions, so the free medium sudoku is a weekday habit.

The rules are the standard ones: every row, column and 3 by 3 box has to hold the digits 1 to 9 once each. Check marks wrong entries, Hint helps when you are stuck, and when the grid is full the page shows your time with a link to challenge friends to the same puzzle.

It suits players who find the easy grid over too quickly but want a lunchtime solve rather than a long fight. The page carries Metro's ads and news videos around the board.

How to play Medium Sudoku (Metro)

1. Open Medium Sudoku on metro.co.uk on a weekday; the day's grid loads under the Rules, Hint and Check buttons.
2. Scan each row, column and 3 by 3 box for digits that can only go in one square.
3. Select an empty square and tap the digit you want on the number pad beside the grid.
4. Where two or three digits could fit, note them as candidates and come back once more of the grid is filled.
5. Press Check to find a wrong digit, or Hint if you cannot see the next move.
6. Fill every square so each row, column and box holds 1 to 9 once; the page then shows your time and a share link.

Tips

• Start with the digits that already appear most often in the grid; their last places are the easiest to pin down.
• When two squares in a box can only hold the same two digits, cross those digits off everywhere else in that box, row or column.
• Try to finish without Hint first and only press Check at the end, so the time you share is a fair one.

Questions