Beginning Sudoku Strategies
Starting out in the world of Sudoku can be extremely hard if you don’t know what you are doing. Your best bet is to read up on the rules and get some beginning Sudoku strategies to make sure you can get started on the right foot.
If you don’t already know, the goal for a Sudoku puzzle is to make sure that every row, column, and box each contain every number 1 through 9. Because each of these items can only have a number once, this lets you use logic to determine which number goes in which square. This is really the ground level of problem solving in Sudoku. If a box has every number except for 2, then that is the obvious answer. This same concept applies to the rows and columns as well.
While this is the basic idea of Sudoku, you should also realize that the puzzles are hardly ever going to be that simple. You will need to combine the information that is available in the rows, columns, and boxes to actually complete a Sudoku board. When you start being able to do this, you really open up yourself to much more in-depth and effective strategies.
Probably the most widely used strategy is one that deals choosing a box and seeing what the surrounding rows contain. Looking at your box you will notice that it has 3 rows and 3 columns that run into it. As another example let’s assume that two of these rows have the number 5 in them. You know then for that box the number 5 can only be in the remaining row, which only has 3 squares. Hopefully two of those squares have already been filled and you can then put the 5 in the last one. If not, then you can move on and come back to that area once you have completed more of the puzzle.
Another strategy is to pick a row or column and see which numbers it is missing. For this example lets assume that our row is missing the numbers, 1,2, and 3. We know that they all go into it, but not exactly where. Look at the columns that run into the three empty spaces of your row. Let’s say you find a 2 in the left column and another 2 in the right column. The fact that they already contain 2’s means that there are no more 2’s needed for those columns, which includes two of your empty spaces in your original row. That leaves only one possible space in that row, which you can now fill with a 2.
In the end Sudoku really comes down to eliminating incorrect answers through logic. The information you need is already available and it is up to you to interpret it correctly. A lot of it can end up being simple trial and error, but you’ll be much more successful if you start off using these beginning Sudoku strategies.
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