Sudoku solution – Los Angeles Times 19 May 2026 Expert level sudoku

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:03][music] [music] >> Hello fellow Sudokans. Welcome to Zen and the Art of the Guardian Sudoku puzzle. It's Tuesday the 19th of May 2026. I hope you are keeping well, enjoying life as best you possibly can, and in reasonably good shape.

[00:00:24]Um Here's a small tale about unintended consequences. And something I've just learned, apparently the California has a place called the Channel Islands. I had no idea. Now, of course, being British, I know the Channel Islands, normally Jersey and Guernsey and etc. etc. Uh near France that Britain stakes a claim to.

[00:00:46]I had no idea there was a place called the Channel Islands in California.

[00:00:50]Uh and maybe a sailor didn't have much idea either because he was stranded there. Well, apparently his boat got crashed, his boat crashed against the rocks on the island and stranded him. 67-year-old managed to shoot a couple of flares and managed to get some get himself rescued.

[00:01:08]But unfortunately, it seems like the flares might have set off some of the worst uh wildfires across the place and possibly um lighting up more than 10,000 acres.

[00:01:20]Uh and and destroying plants and um uh various species destroying various species of plant that have been uh tried to be protected.

[00:01:33]Oh dear.

[00:01:35]Unintended consequences.

[00:01:38]I'm just back from a lunch with a friend and we've been talking about unintended consequences and my own position at the moment. I've been desperately trying to help someone sort out their life in terms of my own effort and in terms of my own finances when I can't really afford to do such a thing. But uh there needs to be a balance, right?

[00:01:58]You have to um, always consider your own position as well. You can't in this life, you can't do everything to help uh, another person.

[00:02:10]Um, especially if you yourself are responsible to other people, separate people.

[00:02:15]And that was just pointed out to me that I've been working very hard to try to save the life of someone.

[00:02:22]Uh, this is not a random person, of course, someone dear to me, but uh, there are limits and I can only do so much.

[00:02:30]And uh, I have duty to other people to be fit and healthy as fit and healthy as I can and I need to spend money myself on my own hospital bills, etc., etc., which has been concerning me. So, yeah, I guess that's one of the difficult things in life is trying to get the balance right. It's It's never easy to find the right balance in life.

[00:02:51]We want to help others as much as we possibly can, but there are times when we simply can't do enough They just, you know, we just can't do enough or there's uh, there's just always more to be done and we we we we can't do that particular We can't do more than that.

[00:03:10]So, anyway, uh, it was a an agreeable lunch, nice thought-provoking lunch, and uh, hopefully, uh, will put me in a slightly better frame of mind.

[00:03:22]Uh, but we yet we are yet to see because, uh, when emotions take um, take over, you you, um, then sometimes logic can go out of the window.

[00:03:33]>> [sighs] >> And uh, although this is a game of logic, and we try to apply I try to apply logic as much as possible in life, uh, being a regular human being, uh, emotion does play a large part in decisions.

[00:03:47]Right.

[00:03:48]Anyway, we're still in California because it's the Los Angeles Times expert level puzzle. I can see I can see several things.

[00:03:56]I'll tell you the things that I can see.

[00:03:58]I can see the twos blocking up here and across there like that.

[00:04:03]Let me two there.

[00:04:05]And I can What's the other thing I see?

[00:04:06]Four blocking down here like this giving us the four in that square.

[00:04:14]And uh the two and the eight on the right-hand side here blocking down which will give me a pair of two and eight in those squares there which won't get me anything immediately, but it will be uh useful information.

[00:04:30]Okay, so two and eight in these squares down here.

[00:04:37]So then five blocks down here and across there, so that must be a five.

[00:04:54]Uh it's just chucking out time at the local uh office {slash} warehouse across the road and I can hear the woman who feeds the kittens on her way over to do so presumably, although we just had a bit of a downpour here thankfully, which cooled us down a little slight a smidgen tiny little bit of cooling down there.

[00:05:14]Um So, I'm not sure she's going to be able to feed the cats or not.

[00:05:24]>> [sighs] >> Okay, we've got a pair of five and nine in these squares here because we got fives blocking across and we've got nine this way and back that way, right? So, that's a pair of five and nine in those squares. So, across here we're looking for one four eight.

[00:05:47]Does that help?

[00:05:48]Don't know.

[00:06:13]Okay, eight blocking these squares eight blocking this square here this square here.

[00:06:18]So, that's our eight.

[00:06:21]Uh nine blocks across here, so that gives me nines in those squares. The other missing digits are one and five Okay, five blocks here. So, we know that's nine and five and this must be a one.

[00:06:35]Then we have one blocking up there.

[00:06:37]There's our one.

[00:06:53]Uh we also have a pair of nines in those squares.

[00:07:03]But, I think we'll go around the clock and see what we can find.

[00:09:29]>> Somewhere there ought to be a pair.

[00:09:32]>> [clears throat] >> A useful pair.

[00:10:16]>> Okay. Found something at least. So, I said before we have five and nine in those squares as a pair, right? Five nine there and nine blocking across.

[00:10:25]And so now we have one and eight down here. So, that's a pair of one and eight in those squares there. So, that's one eight. That's five nine. These two squares are not one or eight or five or nine. They must be three and six.

[00:10:38]So, is that useful?

[00:10:43]Uh don't know, but it does put sixes into those squares.

[00:10:51]>> [clears throat] >> And so then that's yes, three sixes, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:01]Hm.

[00:11:04]Two there on this side.

[00:11:21]So, five nine.

[00:11:23]Hm.

[00:11:26]This is a tantalizing puzzle. If I feel like stuff is really close at hand and I just can't just can't touch it.

[00:11:37]It's millimeters beyond my fingertips.

[00:11:41]I don't know why.

[00:12:08]>> [snorts] >> Dagnabbit, or whatever the word is.

[00:12:25]I'm not going to see it.

[00:12:28]So, I'd better put in some pencil marks. Ah, I think I I thought I heard the rain.

[00:12:34]Nope, it's not the rain.

[00:12:36]Let's put in some threes and sixes there. Let's put in some the pair of five and nine that go there.

[00:12:42]And let's put in the one and eight that go there.

[00:12:47]Let's put in the uh five and nine that go up there.

[00:12:52]And so, we've also got um two and seven in this section here.

[00:13:03]Uh seven.

[00:13:09]Hey, what have I done? Sorry. I put three there by mistake. Apologies.

[00:13:19]Sixes are there. Sorry.

[00:13:20]It's the five and nines that I can't get here, right? Five blocking across there.

[00:13:24]We'll put fives in those squares, and then nine uh can still go anywhere.

[00:13:31]That block is then complete, so I just get that one out of the way.

[00:13:35]Uh 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Yeah, so okay, it's what I had seen.

[00:13:40]Right now, over here we had two and eight. Let's put that in.

[00:13:44]Now, our nine blocks across here, so we get a pair of nines there.

[00:13:49]And we've got nines there.

[00:13:53]And we have to have nines in one of these two squares, which I did say before, and then I entirely forgot about.

[00:14:00]Somebody in the comments will be admonishing me, for sure.

[00:14:05]There we go.

[00:14:09]Doesn't change much over here, though.

[00:14:13]Right.

[00:14:18]And we've got one there somewhere. We've got uh fours in those squares there, and we've got um eight somewhere along there.

[00:14:32]Okay.

[00:14:35]Eights there, eights there. Since I'm doing that.

[00:14:42]Ones there.

[00:15:24]Oh, damn. I didn't see that. That's I didn't see this. So, okay. So, there's a one there.

[00:15:29]Which means that's a one. That's Sorry.

[00:15:33]There's a one there. That's an a one down there.

[00:15:37]That's an eight in that square there.

[00:15:40]That's an eight. And that's two.

[00:15:45]And then two blocking across and down there gives me two in that square. And two blocking up and down and across there. If I can only hold down the right mouse key keyboard key, I should say.

[00:15:58]Uh it would be much easier. But anyway, never mind. We've finished digit two now.

[00:16:04]And uh got some more info down here probably.

[00:16:12]So, we've got our six blocking down here. So, six is in one of those squares. So, that can't be a six.

[00:16:18]It must be a three. And that must be the six just there.

[00:16:28]Missing digits here are six and seven.

[00:16:31]Any clue on those? No. Okay. So, then this has to be a uh three.

[00:16:43]So, three in there, not there.

[00:16:46]And a pair of threes up there.

[00:17:28]>> Six blocking this square, six blocking this square, six blocking this square.

[00:17:33]So, in this row, there's a six, and then six up here across, and across there will give me a six in that square there.

[00:17:49]Pair of sevens there, which makes a pair of sevens in the middle here because we've got top and bottom, top and bottom.

[00:18:09]Looks like that's the only possible place for a nine in that block.

[00:18:14]That gives me a nine over here.

[00:18:17]Nine there, five there.

[00:18:26]Six blocking down here, so a six in what in this square here, actually.

[00:18:30]That's a six, that's a seven.

[00:18:38]One and eight there, this must be a five.

[00:18:44]So, five blocking this square and this square and this square, so that's a five.

[00:18:49]That's not.

[00:18:59]Five across there.

[00:20:00]>> A pretty straightforward game really, nothing difficult there, but just took me a a little while to get into it.

[00:20:07]And um couldn't see the uh pair that I needed, but they reveal themselves upon sticking in a few small numbers. Okay, that's it for Tuesday's Los Angeles Times expert level puzzle. I hope it's going to rain. It's looking quite dark outside, which is nice. It did rain a little bit, but not much, so we could do with a bit more. Try and cool us down a bit here in Bangkok. Thanks for joining me. Take care. Bye-bye.