Daily Sudoku

Common questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Is each puzzle unique to the day?

Yes. The daily board is selected using the shared UTC date, so every player works on the same puzzle on the same day.

Are there different difficulty levels?

Yes — Easy, Medium, and Hard. Same generator, different clue count: Easy starts with 36 filled cells, Medium with 30, Hard with just 24, so the jump between them is a real difference in how much you have to work out, not just a label.

Is this a good sudoku for kids or beginners?

There's no separate kids mode, but Easy is generated with 36 starting numbers — 12 more than Medium — so more than half the board is already filled in. That's the difficulty I'd point a kid or a first-timer to.

Does my progress save if I navigate away?

Your progress is saved automatically in your browser as you play, so you can close the tab and return later to continue exactly where you left off.

Is there a timer?

A timer tracks how long you have been playing, but there is no time limit — you are free to solve at whatever pace suits you.

Can I use pencil marks or candidate notes?

No, not yet — there's no dedicated pencil-mark mode for candidate numbers. The board's highlighting (see the color question below) covers some of that gap, but on Hard puzzles you'll probably still want scratch paper on the side.

What happens if I place a wrong number?

The board doesn't auto-correct you, but a conflicting entry is flagged the moment you place it. Hit the eraser (or Backspace/Delete) to clear the selected cell and try again — there's no multi-step undo, just that one cell.

Can I print today's sudoku puzzle?

There's no dedicated print or PDF button. It's a normal webpage, so your browser's print function (Ctrl/Cmd+P) turns today's grid into a printable sudoku puzzle — the layout isn't tuned for paper, but it works. A screenshot does the job too if you'd rather solve offline; Easy difficulty is the one I'd print for a beginner.

Do you have a 'sudoku evil' or expert difficulty level?

Not under that name — Hard is as far as the built-in levels go, and it's generated with just 24 starting numbers, which is genuinely tough. One honest caveat: on the rare board where a unique-solution Hard grid takes too long to generate, it quietly falls back to a Medium-difficulty puzzle instead of freezing your browser — you'd only notice if a 'Hard' day feels a little easier than usual.

Can I use techniques like X-Wing on these puzzles?

Yes — every puzzle is a standard 9x9 grid, so every classic technique applies. On Hard's 24-clue boards, basic scanning often isn't enough; that's exactly where X-Wing, Swordfish, and similar candidate-elimination strategies earn their keep.

Do you offer 'color sudoku', where colors replace or highlight numbers?

Not as a dedicated variant — the grid always shows plain numbers. But color is already doing real work: select a cell and every matching number, plus its row, column, and box, gets shaded, and any conflicting entry is flagged in a different color the instant you place it.

Are Easy, Medium, and Hard the same grid with fewer clues, or genuinely different puzzles?

Genuinely different. Each difficulty is generated from its own independent daily seed rather than being one shared grid with more or fewer numbers pre-filled, so Easy, Medium, and Hard are three unrelated boards on any given day. Each also keeps its own separate saved progress and timer, so switching from Hard to Easy and back doesn't touch or overwrite what you'd already filled in on Hard.

Can I overwrite one of the starting pre-filled numbers?

No — cells that came filled in from the puzzle are locked. Both number entry and the eraser check whether a cell started empty before doing anything, so a given number can't be typed over or cleared; you can only fill in and erase the cells that started blank.

Can I play this entirely from the keyboard, without a mouse?

Almost — one initial click or tap is required to select a starting cell, since nothing is selected when the page loads and the arrow keys only move an existing selection rather than creating one. Once a cell is selected, though, it's fully keyboard-driven: number keys 1-9 place that value, Backspace/Delete/0 clears the cell, and the four arrow keys move the selection around the grid — they stop at row and column 0-8, so you can't arrow off the edge of the board. Ctrl, Cmd, and Alt combinations are ignored so normal browser shortcuts still work.

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