Easy Sudoku — Beginner Grids You Can Finish Without Guessing
Most people who bounce off sudoku bounce off a puzzle that was too hard for where they were, and conclude the game is not for them. It nearly always is. What was missing was a grid with enough numbers in it that the next step is findable.
That is what this page is. Both levels are full 9x9 sudoku — same rules, same grid, nothing simplified — but they start with far more numbers than a standard puzzle: around 47 on "gentle", about half the board, and around 40 on "easy". Every grid generated at either level can be completed using only the two techniques a beginner already has. The first is a square with one possibility left, once you have ruled out everything in its row, column and box. The second is a digit with one possible home left in a row, column or box. If you can spot those two things, you can finish every puzzle here, and you will never be reduced to guessing.
Mistakes are flagged as you make them on this page, which is the other difference from the standard game. A wrong digit that clashes with nothing yet is the reason a beginner's grid falls apart twenty minutes later, with no way back to where it went wrong. Here it turns red immediately. Once that stops happening to you, switching the flag off — the tick box under the number pad — is the natural next step, and after that the medium and hard grids on the main sudoku page are the ones worth trying.
Every puzzle has exactly one solution, checked during generation rather than assumed. Numbers go in by tapping a square and then a number, or with the keyboard: arrow keys move, 1 to 9 place, backspace clears. There is a timer, but on these grids it is better ignored for a while — accuracy first, speed later, the same order that works for times tables and touch typing.
How to play Easy Sudoku
- Start on "Gentle", which fills about half the grid for you.
- Look for a square with only one number left that fits its row, column and box.
- Then look for a number with only one square left in a row, column or box.
- Tap the square, tap the number. A red square means it clashes or cannot be right.
- Move to "Easy" once gentle grids stop being a challenge, then untick "flag wrong digits".