Sudoku solution – Der Spiegel 3 May 2026 Difficult level sudoku

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:03][music] [music] Hello fellow Sudokans. Welcome to Zen and the Art of the Guardian Sodoku puzzle. It's Sunday the 3rd of May 2026.

[00:00:19]I hope you are keeping well. It's another one of those long weekends here.

[00:00:24]Uh we had a holiday on Friday of course uh Mayday holiday but also tomorrow Monday is a holiday for many people not everybody though some but I believe it is a bank holiday tomorrow some companies are still working though um and that's for coronation day so a of course a lot of people have gone away for the weekend trying to escape the heat although where you go to escape the heat I have no idea one place you can't really go out of um Thailand to get away from the heat is probably Vietnam Well, I suspect the conditions are pretty similar there as well. I'm mentioning Vietnam at the moment because uh apparently um some people have been uh 64 people have been hospitalized with food poisoning. I've never been to Vietnam actually. It's have I have never been there, but um people that I know that have been there, one thing they always talk about is the uh petisserie products. They often say they're really good and that's really because of the heritage from the French. Uh we don't have particularly good bread here in Thailand. You can find it sometimes. Uh you know there are a few places around where you can get some good stuff. Um but it's uh not kind of widespread uh good bread. Um but apparently in Vietnam it's everywhere. In particular the baguette of course and French bread.

[00:01:45]Um I do love uh baguettes. Uh here in Thailand, it tends to be very soft um or like concrete. One [laughter] one of one of those two options that's available, but apparently is beloved in um Vietnam.

[00:02:02]But anyway, it seems to be a bakery that has caused the problems. It was in fact bread that has caused 64 people to be hospitalized um and uh in hospital as well. So uh they have the whole works, you know, the regular stuff that's with um uh that you get with food poisoning. Uh no reports of deaths at the moment. So let's hope that stays the same. But um it was serious incident.

[00:02:33]Uh and uh let's hope those people recover well and go on to eat bread again at some point.

[00:02:40]Here of Thailand, of course, we are a rice based society as it is Vietnam as well, but um you know, they do have that extra uh colonial inheritance and we don't have that in Thailand for sure. Uh let's get on with our game of Sudoku then.

[00:02:58]Uh, what have I got for you? Despel hard level sodoku puzzle. That's what's on the uh agenda for this morning.

[00:03:09]Uh, [sighs and gasps] and where where where are we going to be? We've got a nice shape. We've got like a Oh, sorry.

[00:03:16]I was going to point out the shape to you. A kind of um rotated square maybe.

[00:03:26]um nice to look at but uh not being very conducive to finding the first digit at the moment.

[00:03:38]Yawning [sighs] yawning again.

[00:03:43]We're going to start with digit seven here.

[00:03:55]And then we're going to get digit nine down here.

[00:04:01]So here we're looking for one and two.

[00:04:04]Now with the ones blocking up here, one blocking down here, one across there, one across there, that one there. That should give us a one in that square.

[00:04:17]And how about two?

[00:04:26]Well, two blocks up here. So, two has to be in one of those squares blocking across. Two blocking across there and two up there. So, that'll give us two in that square.

[00:04:42][snorts] >> [sighs] >> Okay, we're missing 2 8 9 in this column. We've got two and eight here.

[00:05:44]So, that should be a nine.

[00:06:29]Nine blocking across here and there. And a nine up there.

[00:06:50]I think I'm going to go around in order now because I'm not noticing anything [sighs] uh particularly um useful >> [snorts] [snorts] [sighs] [sighs] [snorts] >> I'm going to put in pencil marks because I don't think I'm going to get very far with this game unless I two.

[00:10:11]Um, yeah, let's do it. Okay, so we're going to put one and two in those squares there.

[00:10:19]And, uh, do we know any more about digit one?

[00:10:28]And how about the twos?

[00:11:24]>> [sighs] >> Five is not being very friendly to us at the moment.

[00:11:59]>> [sighs] [snorts] >> And I think that's my lot. [sighs] So, it's going to be candidate heavy unfortunately cuz look, a lot of white space there and there. Uh, I'll try doing the middle section first. That might be there might be fewer candidates to fill in there, but um it's not looking very promising, I must admit.

[00:13:05]Let's see.

[00:13:07]One, two, three, four, five. Oh, maybe I should do the Let's do this section first. This this horizontal section.

[00:13:14]Uh fives go in those squares there. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine. Okay, we're done then.

[00:13:23]So, is there anything there?

[00:13:28]Uh don't know tw's block like this. So we get twos in those squares there.

[00:13:38]Five blocks like this.

[00:13:45]And we're done.

[00:13:51]All >> [snorts] >> right. Now, let's come across the middle here. One, two, three, four, five. Can go anywhere.

[00:14:11]And on this side, we're missing digit five only.

[00:14:18]And did we come up with something?

[00:14:22]Yes. Pair of three and five in this row.

[00:14:26]So this five and this five can be removed and we end up with a pair of four and six there. No. Is that any good?

[00:15:00]I think this is going to be a tough game.

[00:15:05]Uh, all right. Where are we? Let's try the right hand side.

[00:15:33]Ah, we got a single here.

[00:15:36]Oh no, I haven't done one. Oh dear, that's a shame.

[00:15:44]Uh, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Done. Okay.

[00:15:52]um any particular direction down or across doesn't matter I think we'll come down one blocking down here cat's decided to uh comment Yes, cat. We know. I know you don't like sodoku.

[00:16:31]Done.

[00:16:44]Okay. Uh any I didn't spot anything there.

[00:16:59]So back up here.

[00:17:45]And there's only one more block to go.

[00:17:46]And it's looking very tough as I thought it might be.

[00:17:52]Some of these Spiegel games can be really tough actually. Worse than the Guardians Expert sometimes, but hopefully not all the time.

[00:18:31]That's it. All the candidates are in situ.

[00:18:38]Candidate placement over. Hard work begins. Really hard work as well, I think.

[00:19:06]and I'm not spotting anything in a kind of traditional easy to find pattern. So, let's have a quick look and make sure I haven't made any mistakes and also see if there are any pointing digits that I've I've neglected.

[00:19:50]Oh yeah, I've got pointing fours there.

[00:19:52]I got to get rid of those candidate fours there. That was a mistake.

[00:20:05]Oh, digit five. Thanks for nothing.

[00:21:00]All right. [sighs] Uh we have an X-wing I think on fours here, here and here and here. Yes, we do. Okay, these are the only two fours uh in this row. And so it means that the four can be removed here and there and remove two fours there. So that gives us a five. Yay, a five. Thank goodness for a five. my kingdom for a five. And that's going to give me a two there. And that's going to give me a two there.

[00:24:21]Uh but first of all, let's get rid of fives, shall we? There are so many places to get rid of fives.

[00:24:27]Uh let's see. Well, first of all, every five here and the two fives down there, and the five there, and the five, and the five there. Let's see now.

[00:24:39]Okay, we can place a one here.

[00:24:45]And we can get a four in that square there. And a four over there. And a five there.

[00:24:53]Nine.

[00:24:56]Nine.

[00:24:58]Nine.

[00:25:00]Let's get rid of some candidate nines first.

[00:25:08]Um because nine is finished. So maybe ought to tidy up a little bit. Let's get rid of candidate one down there.

[00:25:15]Candidate one there.

[00:25:22][snorts] Get rid of the two by placing an eight.

[00:25:29]And then put a five there and an eight there and a one there.

[00:25:36]And again, we'll get rid of a couple of digit ones.

[00:25:46]Get rid of that eight because it's annoying me. [sighs] Get rid of the eights down here and place an eight there and there and there because that's the last digit eight. And then get rid of the extra candidate digit eight.

[00:26:07]Uh we've got five already. So you must be a seven.

[00:26:12]Three there. Four there.

[00:26:16]Six.

[00:26:20]Five.

[00:26:43]Digit one is finished. So, let's clean up the stragglers.

[00:26:48]1, eight, and nine are done.

[00:26:55]And I think we've uh actually got the rest of the game. So, it just relied on the X-wing. Uh it didn't need more than that. Sometimes these games need more than one trick.

[00:27:05]Uh but nope, the X-wing was enough to finish this particular game by the looks of it.

[00:27:28]Okay, we are done. So, that's the Spiegel's difficult level Sudoku puzzle done for Sunday. And hopefully I'll be back with some other Sudoku later in the day. Take care. Bye-bye.