Easy sudoku
Easy here means one technique and nothing else: every digit on the board can be reached by looking at a row, a column or a box and noticing that exactly one cell in it is still free to take some digit. That is the whole level, so what you practise is speed of scanning rather than depth of reasoning.
Hi! I am Ollie. Welcome to Sudoku Springs!
Every grid here is built to easy and checked against it before you see it. Scan the boxes. No pencil marks needed. Have fun!
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Show answer
nine pools Fill every row, column and box with 1-9. The Nine Pools board of Sudoku Springs is graded easy, and a level of the trail takes four to six cleared boards.
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Show answer
steam bridge Fill every row, column and box with 1-9. The Steam Bridge board of Sudoku Springs is graded easy, and a level of the trail takes four to six cleared boards.
What easy is allowed to ask for
One technique is the whole permitted set here. A grid is rejected during the build if scanning a row, a column or a box will not finish it, so nothing on an easy board ever asks for a written candidate list.
Grids are built as you play, so this page never runs out, and each one is proved to have exactly one solution before it reaches you.
A easy grid, opened three moves
This is not a drawing. The engine dug it at easy from the fixed
seed opening:easy:0, so it is here tomorrow too, and it reached you with
30 starting digits. These techniques finish it in 51 moves, and the hardest one it forces is a hidden single.
Its first 3 moves, in the order the solver makes them. Recompute the candidates from the digits above and you will get the same answer, because nothing below leans on an elimination you cannot see.
- hidden single — In row 3, 1 has only one cell left it can go in. The cell is r3c5, where only 1 and 2 were still legal, so it is 1.
- hidden single — In row 2, 1 has only one cell left it can go in. The cell is r2c1, where only 1 and 8 were still legal, so it is 1.
- hidden single — In row 8, 4 has only one cell left it can go in. The cell is r8c6, where only 4 and 8 were still legal, so it is 4.
The techniques you will meet
Every one of those has a page with a real worked example, generated by the same solver that grades these grids.
Only one technique is ever in play here, so hearing its name in the free rung tells you nothing you did not already know. The unit in the same sentence does tell you something: it is the one the reasoning actually happened in, reported rather than guessed, so a free press narrows your scan to nine cells and leaves the digit to you.
Printable sudoku: easy
Each sheet is 12 grids at one level, two to a page, answers at the back. Free, no sign-up, and yours to photocopy for a class.
Other levels: medium, hard, expert.
Under every grid is the first move, in the same words the hint in the game uses: it names the row, column or box to look in and the digit to look for, and never the cell, so it unsticks you at the start without solving anything for you. The answer page names the hardest technique each grid actually needed, measured by the solver that built it. See all four sheets, with a preview of each.
Other levels
- Medium Pencil marks start to pay off.
- Hard Needs a pair or a locked digit.
- Expert Goes past the standard techniques. Take your time.
The single technique this level runs on gets a page of its own at hidden single, worked line by line. Once the scanning has gone automatic, medium sudoku adds exactly one technique on top of it and stops there.