Sudoku (The National)

About Sudoku (The National)

The National is an English-language newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, and its website has a small puzzles section: Sudoku, Killer Sudoku, the word game WordroW and a jigsaw, with a weekly news quiz alongside. Sudoku is the plain numbers puzzle of the set. The page introduces it as a daily Sudoku that puts your logic to the test, and the newspaper ran a piece in 2026 inviting readers to fill the grid each day.

Each day there is one grid, the same for everyone who opens the page. It is the classic puzzle: a 9 by 9 grid split into nine 3 by 3 boxes, some digits given, and the rest to be filled so that each row, column and box holds the digits 1 to 9 exactly once. No arithmetic is involved; the digits work only as symbols, and the grid is solved by elimination.

What sets it apart from most newspaper sudokus is the shared play: the page lets you invite friends to the same puzzle and fill it together in real time, so a grid can be a small group effort rather than a solo one. The puzzle runs inside the article page in the browser, built on Amuse Labs' PuzzleMe player, which other news sites also use for their games.

The National asks readers to register, for free, for unlimited access to its content and puzzles, so a regular player may be asked to sign up. It suits anyone who wants one standard sudoku a day from a news site, and especially people who like to solve with a friend or a family member at a distance.

How to play Sudoku (The National)

1. Open The National's Sudoku page in your browser; today's grid loads on the page.
2. Look for a row, column or 3 by 3 box where only one digit is missing, or where a digit can only fit in one cell, and fill it in.
3. Keep going by elimination: each digit from 1 to 9 must appear exactly once in every row, every column and every box.
4. To solve with others, use the invite option to share the puzzle with friends; everyone fills the same grid together in real time.
5. Finish the grid with every cell filled correctly, then come back the next day for a new one.

Tips

• Scan one digit at a time across the whole grid: where a 5 is already placed in two of three boxes in a band, the third 5 often has only one cell left.
• Pencil in candidates only for the hardest cells; most of a daily grid falls to simple scanning.
• When solving with friends, split the grid by boxes or by digits so you do not fill the same cells twice.

Questions