NYT Hard Sudoku Walkthrough | July 19, 2026

[00:00:00]Hello. Let's do the New York Times hard sodoku for July 19th, 2026. 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. All right, I got one, four, six, and eight here. So, the one nothing.

[00:00:16]I see nothing. All right, the four. We have two fours here. Puts a four in one of these three. Does four do anything else? Nope. We have the sixes looking in. Puts a six in one of these three.

[00:00:27]Vertically, we have two sixes. Putting a six in one of these three. Nothing super interesting so far. We do have these eights. Puts an eight in one of these two. And then we have these eights. This eight helps. Puts an eight one of these two. Oopsie. Oh no. Sorry. I I dragged that way off. What happened here? Oh, okay. Eight's in one of these two. I don't know what happened there. Just a mis mis eyeball or something. This column is down to four digits and we know these aren't eight. So that's probably helpful. We need a 2 478.

[00:01:00]So this is 27 only. This is 2 4. Oh, it's not a two. So it's only 47.

[00:01:07]And this can't be seven. That can't be two. So let me just write it out. 2 47 8. That's not seven. That's not two. All right.

[00:01:15]Nothing with those yet. Of course.

[00:01:21]Anything else in this box? I'm looking to see if there's any crossings or other geometry we can look at, but I'm not seeing anything.

[00:01:29]Okay, let's uh let's move on to this six. The six looks down into here. Six is in one of these two that points in. But this six, six is one of these two.

[00:01:44]All right. Does anything else look into here? Either through here or through here. And the answer is no. I mean, the nine's already placed, right? But I'm going to look at these four digits anyway. We need a 4 678.

[00:01:57]So we know these are 478. The top one's not eight. That does make a 47 pair here. But I'm going to write this out first. 4678. So this is 468.

[00:02:07]This is any of them. All right. But this 47 pair that leaves a triple in the row.

[00:02:11]We need a 136.

[00:02:15]This can't be three or six. This is a naked one. And this three looks up making that a six and that a three. Very nice. So now these ones look down or putting a one on one of these three.

[00:02:24]These ones look in here. Putting one in one of these three. This is a filled box row. So we want to look at all of these digits for anything not yet placed in this box. So the one we just did has the corner marks. Two is placed. Three is placed. Six. Three and and nine is not.

[00:02:38]So the nine looks in nine's in one of these. Oh, this nine looks up as well.

[00:02:42]So even better.

[00:02:44]We place the nine in the box. This six also looked up. Removing that six. Now these two nines, we have the nines.

[00:02:52]Okay, four digits in this box. We need a 1 4 7 8. So we have the two eights looking in that places the eight. So that's not an eight. That places eight in this box.

[00:03:05]What did I say? I forget. 1 4 7. So this is 14. The seven's in one of these two.

[00:03:11]That points down with this seven. Seven looks in. Seven's one of these two. And this isn't one. So this is four, seven.

[00:03:17]This is not a four. So this is seven.

[00:03:19]That's four. That's one. And that's seven. That gives us the four and seven here. This is a four six pair.

[00:03:27]And what's this pair? Um two and five.

[00:03:33]These aren't four anymore. Okay. Well, that was a lot. We basically finished this whole band. Um let's rescan this stuff. So the one, the six, the four, the fours look down. Four is one of these three. And then the eight we got.

[00:03:50]Okay. Now, how about this five? No, it doesn't have a buddy there. Then this six still doesn't have a buddy. We have the seven and the two here that we should take care of. These two twos look up twos in one of these two. Now, what we're looking at because this is prime is where's two in this row.

[00:04:03]Unfortunately, both of these could still be two, but the chance was high that one of them wouldn't be able to be by the column.

[00:04:10]But no go there. um the seven now the sorry the sevens look up as well it's a seven one of these two and I want to look at this row which is down to four digits we need a 23 58 2 3 58 so this is 2 35 only not an eight uh this is 358 this can't be two or five so it's 38 and this can't be three or eight so this is two five h kind of a weird result there.

[00:04:41]Okay. And then how about uh let's just take care of this four 7 8 9. So the fours look down putting a four in one of these two and then the sevens and then the eights.

[00:04:53]Okay. And then the nines. Okay.

[00:04:55]This column is down to four digits. We need a 3 four five six. So these aren't three. These are from four five six. The three is up here.

[00:05:06]They can't be four. So they're from 3,56. That's not six. Six looks in. We know six is up there. This columns down to three digits. The one, two, and five.

[00:05:15]This can't be five. So this is one, two.

[00:05:17]This is one, two, five. The fives up here. That claims. That's really important to understand claiming because it's used. Um, if you struggle with the medium, it's almost always claiming that you're struggling with there's claiming somewhere because the medium doesn't actually need pairs and triples. You can look for them. You can find them. They can help. But it gates medium is gated on pointing and claiming. And you're probably going to find pointing more easier than claiming. But anyway, what claiming is is in this column. We are going to need to place a five. The column needs a five. It's going to end up here or here. Well, if a five ends up in one of these two, it can't be also over here. So, these aren't actually five. And you can see that makes this a three and a six. And this is um a one or a two. Uh that leaves a four five pair here. And what's left here? We have 1 2 6 7. So this can't be seven. This is 1 126. This is 1 167. This is any of them, right? And we know that the six and the seven are up or in these three somewhere.

[00:06:17]All right. Well, that was nice. Uh the six is the three. Anything with the three?

[00:06:22]Um I mean three in this box is is one of these two.

[00:06:27]Not amazing, but it's something.

[00:06:30]All right. This stack is almost done.

[00:06:31]This band is is basically done. Just these pairs need to resolve. Uh let's look at this bottom band here. So we have the five.

[00:06:40]We have this four five pair already.

[00:06:42]Unfortunately, no fives up here.

[00:06:44]We have the two and the seven which we took care of. The eight looks through and this eight looks down. Putting an eight in one of these two. That points up telling us this can't be an eight. So that places the eight here.

[00:07:00]>> [snorts] >> Um, so this column is down to four digits. We need a 3 4 6 9. So these can't be six. These are 3 49. Oh, this can't be 3, four or six. So this is a naked nine. I can follow up on that placing the nine here, which places the three. That gives us the five and the two and the one and the five. That gives us the one down here. These are not ones. So this is just a 267 triple. Now, that can't be a one anymore.

[00:07:29]Um, I was in the middle of something. I was in the middle of this column, but I don't know if I finished following up.

[00:07:36]Well, anyway, what was this down to? I don't remember. 346, it looks like. So, this is 34 only. And this is 346. Okay, this is now down to 2 57. So, we know the five is down here. This can't be seven. So, this is 25. This is 257. Um, I talked about uniqueness two days ago, I think, maybe three days ago. Um, but it would tell us that this has to be a seven because we need to avoid having a two five pair in two rows, two columns, and two boxes. Two boxes are very important. People will think that they can do it here, but you cannot. Um, has to be two boxes. Um, that lets you place a seven here. It's called a unique rectangle, but we're not going to use that. But just keep that in mind. But that will be a seven. Um I don't like to use uniqueness in these solves. Uh they aren't it isn't necessary. This is a two five pair. So this is a triple. We know it involves the one and the six. What's the other digit?

[00:08:33]Three 136. Okay. Does that do anything?

[00:08:38]We have this 255. We have this 25.

[00:08:41]Um okay. Low hanging fruit. What's actually worth penciling here? I'm going to look at this column here. Actually, I should look at this one first. We need a 2, three. So, we need a three.

[00:09:01]Wait, no, we don't need a three, thankfully. I wouldn't know where to put it. Right here. Um, we need a 2 4 5 7 9.

[00:09:12]This can't be two or nine. So, this is four. Oh, it's not. None of these are five. So these are these these three are down to 2479.

[00:09:21]So this can't this is 47.

[00:09:25]This is 249.

[00:09:28]Okay. What's this do surprisingly not much uh or not anything.

[00:09:40]All right. I'm going to look at this column then as I was going to look at.

[00:09:42]We need a 1 2 4 59. Well, these can't be five or nine.

[00:09:50]So, these are one, two, four. That's not a one. That's not a four.

[00:09:55]Oh, yeah. This row is just down to 2 3 4 7. So, this is 3 47.

[00:10:04]And this row is down to 1 1257. Not a five. So, one. It's not a two either.

[00:10:09]So, one seven only. Surely one of these will match up at some point.

[00:10:15]So these aren't two. So these are down to one, four, five, nine. This can't be one or five.

[00:10:24]So this is 49.

[00:10:28]This is 145. I'm just trying to find the one cell that's going to finish this.

[00:10:32]Maybe maybe I'm missing um uh a normal scan.

[00:10:40]We do have these two fives looking down.

[00:10:41]This five looks in. So five is in one of these two, the eights, the nines. So we do have these two nines. Nine looks in nine's one of these two.

[00:10:56]What am I missing?

[00:10:59]This puzzle's feels like it should be done, but something's hanging on.

[00:11:04]And it's probably something I've already have marked, though it doesn't have to be.

[00:11:14]I'm just kind of flitting around. I might have to do systematic.

[00:11:18]One, two, six, eight.

[00:11:25]There's not anywhere else juicy to look.

[00:11:28]Is this down to 1459?

[00:11:33]I believe so.

[00:11:35]Where there's was there any pointing or claiming that I might have ignored? This is a 136.

[00:11:41]25. I mean, uniqueness would have finished this, but like I said, I don't use it. Um, well, let's just think about this box in general. Like, what's it need? It needs a one. So, I'm just going to look at like what ones look in. So, one ends up here somewhere. I bet you it's this digit actually.

[00:12:04]Anyway, so we need a one, two, this could be three, four. It's not five.

[00:12:10]It could be six. Can't be seven, eight, or nine. So, it's down to 3 46. There we go. And that does make I suspected this one because it wasn't corner marked, right? We have 5, eight, and nine corner marked. Not here. And it did make a 3 46 triple. So, that was very lucky. Um, by the way, could use uniqueness again to say that three is going to be down here because again, we cannot have a four six pair in two columns, two rows, and two boxes.

[00:12:35]So, we would have to put a three on these two. The violation there would be there would be at least more there would be more than one solution. That's why it's called uniqueness. Um and that would actually make this a six, but we don't need to use that. This is 3 4 6 meaning that can't be a four. So that's nine. And then this can't be a six. And so we should be down to this isn't a four. This should be down to 27.

[00:12:56]Okay. So that's not a nine. Um so there should be one more nine to place. Yeah, it's right here. And that gives us the four, which gives us five and four. That's a one. That's a two.

[00:13:11]We get the five and seven. That's that seven I had earlier. That's two and five. That's a two. We get the 1, four, 3, and seven.

[00:13:21]So remember, I'm predicting this is going to be a a three. So I'm just going to I won't corner mark it. So that'll confuse me. But that's two. That's eight. That's seven. That's a seven. Six and two. That's a three. Six and one.

[00:13:34]That makes that four and that three.

[00:13:37]There you go. That's a six and a four.

[00:13:39]That's five and eight. And that's a six.

[00:13:41]All right.

[00:13:44]So, as you can see, this did not end up four six pairs. And where was the other one? Uh, it was just right here. Yeah, this didn't end up two five pairs or I think yeah, it was two five pairs that we needed to avoid. Um, now you can find them in the grid, but they're going to always involve a given because the given is telling you which one is used. So, let me just find one. They're usually not very hard to find.

[00:14:09]Um, although today, here we go. Here's one.

[00:14:15]So, if we had not been given this seven, there would be at least two solutions. I know that for a fact because that would allow us to swap the sevens and the threes. So if we had the exact same game, we'd have at least two solutions if this seven weren't given from the start. But by giving the seven, we have resolved this unique rectangle. And that's actually why you need givens in the first place, right? Without any givens, you have a ton of solutions. To get it down to one solution, you have to resolve all of these uh what they call deadly patterns sometimes or uniqueness formations. All right, cool. Well, how'd you do?