Solving your first Sudoku puzzle can be challenging, but by following these tips, you'll be a Sudoku pro in no time. We suggest starting off with an easy or beginner rated puzzle and then working your way up to a more advanced challenge. You don't need to spend money to play, as there are lots of free online sudoku sites. You can find our free web sudoku here.
A standard sudoku puzzle consists of a nine by nine grid of boxes. Each of the boxes can hold one of the numbers from 1 to 9. When you begin to solve the puzzle, some of the boxes are already filled in, and these entries constrain what you can put in the other boxes. The eighty-one boxes are also grouped into 9 3x3 sections.
The object of sudoku is to put a digit in each of the empty boxes in such a way that each row, column, and section contains exactly one of each of the nine digits. A correctly completed grid will contain exactly nine of each of the digits. The following example shows a complete sudoku puzzle. Notice that each row, column, and section contains each digit exactly once.
| 4 | 2 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 8 |
| 6 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 9 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 1 |
| 7 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 9 | 3 | 2 |
| 2 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 9 | 6 |
| 5 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 4 |
| 9 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 5 |
| 8 | 5 | 2 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 1 | 4 | 3 |
| 1 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 9 |
| 3 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 7 |
There are no other rules! Simply use logic to place numbers in the grid. Most sudoku puzzles have a single, unique solution. Keeping this in mind, it is best not to guess, but to to use reasoning to determine what number must be in a box before filling it in.