Medium Sudoku — Building Your Skills
Medium puzzles are the natural next step after Easy. They still rely primarily on basic techniques, but with fewer given clues and positions that require more careful scanning. You'll start to develop the pattern recognition skills that carry over to harder levels.
What Makes a Puzzle "Medium"?
Medium grids typically have fewer starting numbers than Easy, which means:
- More empty cells to work through.
- Situations where Naked Singles are less immediately obvious.
- Greater reliance on systematic cross-hatching across rows, columns, and boxes.
The strategies you'll need:
- Naked Singles and Hidden Singles — still the core toolkit.
- Occasional Intersection Removal (Pointing Pairs) — when candidates in a box are restricted to a single row or column, allowing eliminations elsewhere.
Who Are Medium Puzzles For?
- Comfortable beginners who have mastered Easy and want more.
- Daily solvers looking for a reliable 10–15 minute challenge.
- Anyone building stamina — Medium puzzles are great for consistent daily practice.
Tips for Solving Medium Sudoku
- Be systematic — scan every row, column, and box rather than jumping around randomly.
- Look for pointing pairs — if a number in a box can only be in one row, eliminate that number from the rest of the row.
- Use pencil marks early — on Medium, writing candidates becomes more useful than on Easy.
- Revisit areas — placing one number often opens up new Singles elsewhere. Re-scan after each placement.