Sudoku solution – The Guardian 23 May 2026 Expert level sudoku

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:03][music] [music] >> Hello fellow Sudoku ins. Welcome to Zen in the Art of the Guardian Sudoku puzzle. It's Saturday the 23rd of May 2026 and I hope you are keeping well and enjoying your weekend if your weekend has started. It's still pretty early here in Bangkok, Thailand.

[00:00:25]Um and uh what's going on in uh if this uh this will be the um expert level puzzle from the Guardian.

[00:00:35]If that fills you with trepidation, uh fear not. I'll get you to the end. It might not be a beautiful, elegant, or fast solution, but I will get you there somehow.

[00:00:45]Uh that's coming up in a minute. Uh our chat section today looks at um the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why is that you're wondering? Uh there have now been seven people confirmed dead and 82 confirmed cases, but 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths according to the World Health Organization.

[00:01:09]Uh which is dealing with the Ebola uh outbreak in uh the DRC.

[00:01:16]Um so uh bad situation there and of course uh Ebola has the ability to jump over uh borders because people do travel internationally and in fact um at least one US national has tested positive and been transferred to Germany and another to the Czech another US national to the Czech Republic.

[00:01:39]Uh so uh an alarming situation one to watch out for.

[00:01:44]Um maybe try not to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo unless you have specific need to.

[00:01:53]Shall we get on with our game of Sudoku because it might take some time based on recent games that uh that the Guardian has put out. We It used to be a very simple game of Sudoku, but it's now significantly toughened up its Sudoku challenge.

[00:02:13]And so uh we should probably get on with it.

[00:02:19]Okay. So, I'm going to begin with one blocking these squares here. One blocking this square here, but one has to appear in one of those squares blocking that square there, so that's going to give us one there, and then we can take one up here, one across there.

[00:02:39]>> [clears throat] >> We of course have a soft introduction.

[00:02:57]As usual, the tough stuff comes just at the end.

[00:03:01]I presume.

[00:03:04]>> [snorts] >> Missing digits in this row: 4 7 9. We've got 7 and 9 together.

[00:03:27]That should be a 4.

[00:03:30]Uh that just clicked on four, and I just realized nothing else came up here, so that means there weren't any fours on the board. Aha.

[00:03:47]Nine blocks this square, so there's the nine.

[00:03:50]And there's the seven.

[00:04:09]Three blocks across here and down there, so there's a three. Seven blocks across there, there's a seven.

[00:04:29]>> [snorts] [sighs] >> Let's go through I was going to say alphabetically, that's not right, is it?

[00:05:30]Numerically.

[00:06:17]>> Five blocking across here. Five is in one of these two squares blocking across and five up here.

[00:06:33]Digit five is our first victim.

[00:06:49]Six blocking this square, this square, this square and this square. So, in this column is our six.

[00:07:02]Nine across there.

[00:07:04]There's an eight.

[00:07:07]Uh this is got to be four, I think four and eight, isn't it?

[00:07:13]We've got fours there. We've got eight there. So, yeah.

[00:07:17]That's four and eight, so this is one.

[00:07:26]And that's the last digit one.

[00:07:39]I suspect we're getting quite close to the uh pencil marking bit.

[00:07:56]Uh that's the last three.

[00:08:11]No.

[00:08:34]Final seven.

[00:08:46]>> [sighs] >> Now, I'm blocking to the top.

[00:09:12]>> [snorts] >> And I'm pretty sure we're pretty close now to our pencil marking situation.

[00:09:22]But, let's just keep at it.

[00:09:24]Cuz you never know your luck. You might just spot something.

[00:09:29]>> [snorts] >> All right, that's Oh.

[00:10:49]Thank you for pointing that out.

[00:10:51]How silly.

[00:10:53]There was an extra four that I needed to fit in there.

[00:11:18]All right, I think this is it now then.

[00:11:24]Okay, so let's put in the pencil marks.

[00:11:26]Uh we'll go backwards. We'll put nines in the squares where they can go, which is there.

[00:11:32]And the eights go there.

[00:11:36]They go in any of those squares there, and they go there.

[00:11:41]The sixes go up here and there.

[00:11:49]The fours go there and there, there and there.

[00:11:57]There, there, there.

[00:12:00]Uh anywhere here, anywhere there, and in the pairs there. That's all candidate of four.

[00:12:10]And then finally digit two.

[00:12:13]Can't be finally. I've missed something down here. All right, we'll get That's eight, isn't it?

[00:12:19]Two goes there and there.

[00:12:24]There and there.

[00:12:27]There and there.

[00:12:29]There and there.

[00:12:32]What else? There, there.

[00:12:40]Okay, let me just double-check I've put in all the candidates. Uh twos, okay.

[00:12:44]Fours, every block.

[00:12:46]Looks like it. Sixes, every block, yes. Eights, every block now.

[00:12:53]Think so.

[00:12:54]And nine, done. Right, so here we go. Thinking cap time.

[00:13:09]Ooh.

[00:13:10]>> [laughter] >> Okay, I've got something. I've got an AIC pattern on four.

[00:14:31]I think I have anyway, let me just double check. So, I'm going to start here.

[00:14:34]Okay, and I've got a strong link to this here. That means only two digit fours in this block, so that's a strong link.

[00:14:40]I've got a weak link to digit four over here. Right? Because that is there are three digit fours in that row, but that's okay. So, what we want is strong weak strong link to digit four here. There are only two digit fours in this column, which is what we need, and that's the end of it. So, this is the start. This is the end. And this is the square that can see both of them, so it can't be a four. It has to be a nine.

[00:15:03]That will give me the two there.

[00:15:05]And the nine there.

[00:15:08]And the four.

[00:15:09]And the two.

[00:15:11]And a six. I'm hoping this is the only thing that we need.

[00:15:14]But, I'm not sure yet because sometimes this expert puzzle has taken more than one um trick to finish it off. I don't know about today's. Let's see.

[00:15:27]There's twos there.

[00:15:30]I'll get rid of those twos there.

[00:15:35]And that's a four.

[00:15:46]Hm.

[00:15:47]Mouse was refusing to move.

[00:15:58]Gotcha.

[00:15:59]And it wasn't too long after after all. I just happened to click on an an nice digit.

[00:16:05]And explore the idea for an AIC, an alternating inference chain. And saw it pretty quickly. Okay, that's it then.

[00:16:13]Thanks for joining me.

[00:16:14]Hopefully there'll be some more Sudoku later on. Take care. Bye-bye.