NYT Hard Sudoku Walkthrough | May 19, 2026

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Hello, let's do the New York Times hard Sudoku for May 19th, 2026. If you're looking for May 18th, I didn't do it.

[00:00:06]Sorry. And I probably won't have time to go back and do it.

[00:00:10]All right, anyway, there's a link in the description if you'd like to try the puzzle yourself and I'm going to get started right now.

[00:00:17]Right, two, four, and nine. So, twos, we have two twos here, putting a two in one of these two.

[00:00:24]And the Oops, these twos looking here putting a two in one of these two.

[00:00:29]Now, putting a two in one of these two should trigger looking at this row. Why? Well, what's the reason This is a really obvious question, but what's the reason we didn't corner mark a two here? Uh because there's an eight there, right? It's not because there's already a two in the row. That's the important thing. So, that should trigger us to say, well, we now know the two in the row is not here in this box. So, let's look at the rest of the row and see where it might be. And we can see we conveniently have this two here looking here.

[00:00:58]And that's all we needed to look for.

[00:00:59]So, now we know in this row, the two is limited to this box right here and that gives us what's called claiming because the row needs to place a two. It's going to be here or here. Wherever it places it, it'll be in this box, meaning the rest of the box will not be two.

[00:01:14]So, we just eliminated two from all of these cells in this corner mark or minus to that.

[00:01:18]Uh might come in handy later. Almost usually does when you find claiming.

[00:01:22]Right, so that was the two. Um we have four. I'm just noticing this four looks in Oh, we already have a four here.

[00:01:28]Never mind.

[00:01:30]These fours all look into this box, placing the four here.

[00:01:34]Okay.

[00:01:35]Um vertically, we can place the four as well.

[00:01:40]Let's just do what we can with fours cuz I feel like we've got a lot going on with them. Four is placed in this box here cuz we have these two fours looking down as well.

[00:01:48]And then, so what's going on? These two fours, these fours places the four here and fours are actually done now. Very nice.

[00:01:59]Right, two, four, and nine.

[00:02:01]Two nines look in, putting a nine in one of these two.

[00:02:06]Um See four, nine.

[00:02:13]Do I see anything else here? I see that the eight looks in and this eight looks up, putting an eight in one of these two. Uh actually, eight's placed, that's even better.

[00:02:21]These two eights look in, placing this eight.

[00:02:25]Okay, anything else? Um three.

[00:02:29]Not quite.

[00:02:32]Uh eight, four, two, six.

[00:02:36]We do have these sixes looking in, but it's not quite good enough.

[00:02:41]This column is reduced to reduced to three digits. They are the one, three, and six. Not six. I missed it. One, three, and five.

[00:02:53]I actually don't see any limitations on it, but I will mark one, three, five.

[00:02:58]Okay.

[00:02:59]Um This row is down to three digits.

[00:03:04]We need a one, three, and six.

[00:03:10]I see that this sees a one and a six, so this has to be the three.

[00:03:13]And we're left with a one, six pair.

[00:03:16]Um does this three do anything interesting? I don't know, but this box is down to three digits as well. We need a one, three, nine.

[00:03:25]We know this one's not not Oh, this one's not one or nine, so this is a three.

[00:03:29]This is still isn't one, so that's nine and that's one.

[00:03:32]Um one ends up in one of these two.

[00:03:35]Three digits in this row. We need a one, five, seven.

[00:03:41]Um That's not a one.

[00:03:50]Okay.

[00:03:52]What else can do up here?

[00:03:54]9 3 4 This is This box is done.

[00:04:01]Okay.

[00:04:03]I want to look vertically.

[00:04:05]So, threes Put the three in one of these two.

[00:04:09]Uh four is done. Eight Eight actually is placed in this box. We could follow up on that.

[00:04:17]It's one of these two.

[00:04:20]The nine Uh I'm not really seeing anything with nine.

[00:04:28]All right.

[00:04:30]So, we have all our fours. These nines look down.

[00:04:33]Nine in one of these two.

[00:04:35]Just scanning this row for nine, but don't see it. Um The nine, the four, the ones look in.

[00:04:44]Put the one in one of these two.

[00:04:47]So, one could be here.

[00:04:50]All right.

[00:04:52]I'm going to move on to the next band here.

[00:04:55]Um so, the four We know fours are done.

[00:04:57]The sixes look in.

[00:05:00]Six is one of these two.

[00:05:03]The eights Um How are eights doing? I feel like we have a lot of them.

[00:05:09]Yeah, so we're just down to this rect- uh this square of eights. Normally, it's a rectangle, but this time it's a square. Anyway, this rectangle of eights.

[00:05:18]Um I will look at this row, which is down to four digits. We need a 1 2 5 7.

[00:05:25]So, this is 1 5 7.

[00:05:28]This is 2 5 7.

[00:05:31]This is Oh, not 1 2 or 7. So, this is actually a five. Make it five there.

[00:05:36]These are not fives, so this is 1 2 7.

[00:05:40]Filled box row. I don't know if that helps me.

[00:05:45]No.

[00:05:48]Uh this cell should be limited because it's not the 4 5 9 and it's not the 1 6 8. So, it could be 2 3 Oh, it can't even be 3.

[00:05:57]Okay.

[00:05:59]4 5 6 7. So, 2 7 is it.

[00:06:04]Mhm.

[00:06:09]So, that was the 4 6 and 8.

[00:06:12]Um I'm going to fill this box out cuz you know, we only have four left and I I keep looking at it. So, we need a 1 5 6 9. Oh, so the ones look in. One's one of those two. This column, so we have the same thing, right?

[00:06:29]One of one of these two.

[00:06:31]One wasn't here not because there's a one in the column because there's a seven sitting there. Where is one in the column? Only one of these two.

[00:06:38]And that's going to claim saying these can't be one cuz the column's going to place a one in one of these two.

[00:06:44]Which means we can't put a one here or here or here or here or here or here.

[00:06:47]But here importantly, that makes that a seven cuz it can't be one. That's two and one. That's six. That's one. That's five. Seven and one. That's our three.

[00:06:56]And the one's over here. That like I said is often very important to spot it.

[00:07:01]Uh we need a What do we need? Six and nine, it looks like.

[00:07:06]This one can't be nine. All right, so that's six. That's nine.

[00:07:09]And this is a pair. Oh, this is done.

[00:07:12]Whatever it is.

[00:07:14]Seven.

[00:07:16]This is a pair. Two and something.

[00:07:19]Two and five.

[00:07:21]And then this is a pair.

[00:07:23]Two and something.

[00:07:25]Two and three.

[00:07:26]All right.

[00:07:28]This is a triple.

[00:07:29]We need a 5 6 9.

[00:07:32]Okay, very nice. I feel like we're wrapping up already.

[00:07:36]Uh we need a 5 7 9 here.

[00:07:40]We know that's not seven.

[00:07:42]That one's not nine.

[00:07:45]Seven's one of these two. That's going to point down with this seven. Seven looks in.

[00:07:49]Seven's one of these two. Oops, I don't know what just happened. All right, seven's one of those two.

[00:07:54]This is 2357.

[00:07:57]So, this is 235. This is not two or three. This is 57.

[00:08:02]I think this is any of them. All right.

[00:08:04]This column is just 59.

[00:08:08]Hmm.

[00:08:12]What am I missing here?

[00:08:14]Is there anything else to scan here? The four, the three, seven. Hmm.

[00:08:24]So, what's not corner marked here? Is it just the 27?

[00:08:27]168. No, there's one more. 12. It's 237 not marked here.

[00:08:34]So, this can't be two or seven. So, the seven looks down.

[00:08:38]Is there anything useful here? The nine, the six, the five.

[00:08:47]569.

[00:08:51]Hmm.

[00:08:55]>> [sighs] >> 14.

[00:08:57]Yeah. Uh no.

[00:08:59]Never mind.

[00:09:04]I'm trying to think what to what to look at here.

[00:09:06]We need a 2567.

[00:09:12]So, this is 256.

[00:09:16]This is 267 cuz the five here. So, five's one of these two.

[00:09:22]Okay. We would have seen that from buddies if we had done them.

[00:09:26]Uh I feel like there's not not a shortcut.

[00:09:30]Uh let's see. Let's find what we need to find here.

[00:09:34]5679.

[00:09:35]Oh, this can't be 56 or nine. So, this is a naked seven.

[00:09:39]Seems important. So, this is now a naked five. That's nine. That's six. It finishes the whole row. The nine finishes the five, seven, and nine. Here we get the one and five.

[00:09:47]Uh I noticed that there was a seven corner mark here. This is now the only place for seven. This is now three and this is a two. Oh.

[00:09:54]What I do?

[00:09:56]Okay, that's a three. That's two. That's five.

[00:09:59]Um over here, this is a naked two now.

[00:10:02]We get the three and the two.

[00:10:04]Let's clean that up.

[00:10:05]Only place for one here is now the only place for eight.

[00:10:09]That places the eight in this box as well.

[00:10:11]These can't be six anymore.

[00:10:13]Okay.

[00:10:14]This is a pair. We're just finishing now.

[00:10:17]Um two and six.

[00:10:21]Not resolved.

[00:10:22]Uh what about this triple?

[00:10:24]We need three, six, nine.

[00:10:26]Three, six, seven. Sorry.

[00:10:28]So, this can't be the six or the seven.

[00:10:30]So, that's our three. That's six. That's seven.

[00:10:33]This is a five or a six.

[00:10:35]Oh, what's this? Uh this is a two giving us the six and two giving us five and six giving nine and five. That's nine.

[00:10:41]That's three and we're done.

[00:10:43]All right. Well, um really not too bad today. I think probably the claiming in this puzzle was important as it usually is.

[00:10:53]Um and how'd you do?