The Times Sudoku

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The Times daily sudokus, from mild to super fiendish.

on thetimes.com

A Times sudoku, No 13260 Mild, a nine by nine grid in the Times Puzzles app on a tablet

The Times publishes a set of numbered sudokus every day, graded from easy and mild up to fiendish and super fiendish, with a smaller mini sudoku and an extra puzzle on many days. Recent days stay on the sudoku page.

About The Times Sudoku

The Times was the newspaper that brought sudoku to Britain: Wayne Gould, who had written a program to make and grade the puzzles, offered them to the paper, and it launched them as Su Doku on 12 November 2004. The Times still publishes them every day, and they are part of its puzzles section online and in the Times Puzzles app for phones and tablets.

Each day brings several numbered sudokus at different levels, graded from mild through difficult and fiendish up to super fiendish. Every grid is the classic nine by nine: fill each row, column and three by three box with the digits 1 to 9, starting from the givens. The puzzle numbers run on from day to day, and recent days stay on the sudoku page, so a missed puzzle can be picked up later; the app keeps a two-week archive.

The puzzles sit behind The Times paywall. A Times digital subscription covers them on the website and in the app, and the app also sells its own puzzles-only subscription. It suits solvers who want a graded set every day from one source, with the harder levels needing pencil marks and techniques such as X-wings rather than guesswork.

How to play The Times Sudoku

Sign in with a Times subscription and open the sudoku page on thetimes.com, or the Times Puzzles app.
Pick one of the day's numbered puzzles by its level, from mild to super fiendish.
Fill each empty square with a digit from 1 to 9 so that every row, column and three by three box holds each digit once.
Use pencil marks to note the candidates for a square when no digit is certain yet.
Finish the grid, then try the next level up or an earlier day's puzzle.

Tips

Start each grid by scanning one digit at a time across the boxes; on mild puzzles that alone solves most of it.
On fiendish and super fiendish grids, write candidates in every empty square before going further; the eliminations show up in the marks.
Look for pairs: two squares in a unit that can only hold the same two digits rule those digits out everywhere else in that unit.
When a candidate appears in only two places in each of two rows, lined up in the same two columns, that X-wing removes it from the rest of those columns.
Pick the level to suit your time: a mild grid is a few minutes, a super fiendish one can take half an hour or more.