NYT Hard Sudoku Walkthrough | June 1, 2026

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Hello, let's do the New York Times hard Sudoku for June 1st, 2026.

[00:00:05]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.

[00:00:11]All right, starting in this top left box, we do have two fours looking in here.

[00:00:15]Putting a four in one of these two.

[00:00:18]All right. Um I don't see anything else with that four. Let's move on.

[00:00:23]Here we have a four.

[00:00:25]I think these are the only two fours.

[00:00:26]Yeah, okay.

[00:00:28]The five. Okay, this five looks in, this five looks up. So, five's one of these two. Ooh.

[00:00:35]I completely missed this five. These two fives look in, this five looks in. That places the five very conveniently on top of where we thought a four could go. So, now the four goes there.

[00:00:44]We are down to three digits in this box.

[00:00:46]What are they?

[00:00:47]The one, three, and eight. So, we know this one's not eight. That's it.

[00:00:53]Oh, that one's not one.

[00:00:55]Missing things. All right, that's not eight.

[00:00:57]So, the eight goes in one of these two.

[00:00:58]That's going to point.

[00:01:00]This eight looks in, putting an eight in one of these three. So, we learned these two aren't eight.

[00:01:06]All right. Um these two eights do look down. This eight looks in.

[00:01:11]Placing this eight. These two eights look in, putting an eight in one of these two.

[00:01:18]Okay. Um four, five, eight.

[00:01:26]Sorry, I'm looking at this one, three against this column, but it's not quite there.

[00:01:31]All right. Anything else with this four, five, eight though?

[00:01:36]It feels like there should be something going on here, but I guess we'll get to it. Let's look at this box here.

[00:01:43]Um let's just look at what looks into it. The fives are done, the sevens are not. These sevens look down, this seven looks in.

[00:01:50]Placing that seven. These sevens look in, this seven looks down, putting a seven in one of these two.

[00:01:56]All right.

[00:01:58]Um I was seven and five. How about one, six, or eight? So, the two sixes look in, putting a six in one of these two.

[00:02:07]And then, the one and the eight aren't placed up here yet.

[00:02:12]Okay.

[00:02:14]I think that's it for this top band for now. Let's move on. We have one, seven, and nine.

[00:02:18]These two ones look in. This one looks in as well, placing the one, which then also places the six. And the one looking up places the one in this box.

[00:02:26]We now have a three-eight pair.

[00:02:29]So, these aren't three now.

[00:02:32]Uh I mean, these threes look up, but No, there's nothing to do with that. How about this one that we placed?

[00:02:41]Nope, not that either.

[00:02:45]Uh Four digits left in this row. Let's take a look at that. We need a one, two, six, seven.

[00:02:51]This is two, six, seven.

[00:02:53]This is one, two, seven, cuz it's not six. This can't be one or seven, so this is two, six.

[00:03:01]All right. Nothing from that yet.

[00:03:06]All right, let's uh what were we Were we on these, the one, seven, and nine?

[00:03:10]I think we just did the one. Now, this is a filled box column. Actually, we should look at this whole stack because we have three digits left here, three digits left here. Let's look here first. We need a two, three, four.

[00:03:22]This bottom one's not three, which is important because it means three is in one of these two.

[00:03:28]So, we've eliminated three now from from these cells because if three is in one of these two, it can't also be over here.

[00:03:35]These two digit or three digits, I should say, are three, eight, nine.

[00:03:40]Well, the these two can't be eight, so it places the eight in the column. That gives us the three.

[00:03:45]And then, this is I don't remember.

[00:03:49]This is six, nine. Oh, no, not six.

[00:03:52]1 2 it's 3 9.

[00:03:54]All right, and then this is 2 4 then.

[00:03:56]Cuz we have 3 9 pair that leaves the 2 4 pair.

[00:04:00]And so what are these digits? The column needs 2 4 8 9.

[00:04:05]So unfortunately, this is all of two 2 4 8 9. But this is 2 4 9 and this is 2 4 8.

[00:04:14]Now we do know that the eight is in one of these two and the nine's in one of these two.

[00:04:19]All right.

[00:04:23]That was Okay, let's just keep following Let's just keep doing scanning now. So these sevens look in. Seven in one of these two.

[00:04:32]And then the nine.

[00:04:35]Nine is not helpful.

[00:04:38]This 1 3 and 8. I'm still noticing one and three need to be here.

[00:04:47]It's not good though.

[00:04:50]All right, anything else with one or three?

[00:04:53]Or the eight?

[00:04:56]Eight looking in doesn't do enough.

[00:04:59]No, I don't think so.

[00:05:01]Does anything cross here? So four and six look in here. Oh, the six crosses. This six looks in, this six looks in.

[00:05:08]Put the six in one of these two. That points in here with this six. Put the six in one of these two.

[00:05:15]In fact, this row's just down to 2 4 6 9. Let's look at that.

[00:05:18]So this can't be four or six. This is 2 9.

[00:05:23]Um these can't be nines. These are 2 4 6.

[00:05:28]Right. Okay, and so that's why we saw the sixes there.

[00:05:34]Um any other crossings? The four does not.

[00:05:37]I do notice four is down to these three.

[00:05:39]I also notice this cell is not quite a few it it This can't be quite a few digits. Cuz it's not the 1 3 8, but it's also not the four or the six or the seven.

[00:05:49]Um so, it's down to two See, not three, four. It could be five.

[00:05:55]And I believe it could be nine. So, 2 5 9.

[00:05:59]Nothing immediate from that.

[00:06:02]Okay.

[00:06:05]Any crossings this way? No. So, it would only only be the seven.

[00:06:09]Um Anything else in this band at all?

[00:06:14]Not yet. All right, let's move on to the next band. So, the three doesn't do anything. We have six, seven, and eight.

[00:06:21]So, the sevens and eights are already marked. The six is not.

[00:06:25]So, six is one of these three.

[00:06:28]I think that's all we get.

[00:06:33]All right, clearly we're not done. I'm going to scan rows for anything that might be worth marking. Um I'm going to do a just a really quick initial scan to make sure I didn't miss anything obvious. Then I'm going to do the columns.

[00:06:44]Make sure I didn't miss anything obvious in the columns, and then we'll go to some slightly less restricted cells. So, this is still down to 2 4 8 9, I believe.

[00:06:55]Yeah.

[00:06:56]All right, so we're going to do um rows with five or more left like this one. Basically, if this got four givens or more.

[00:07:05]Um So, we need a 1 2 3 uh I missed something. 1 2 3 6 9.

[00:07:13]1 2 3 6 9. So, we're looking for any cell that sees two of those digits.

[00:07:18]So, like this sees one, this sees three.

[00:07:21]This sees nine, but nothing sees more than more nothing sees two or more of 1 2 3 6 9.

[00:07:28]This sees six.

[00:07:30]All right. How about this row? We need a 3 5 7 8 9.

[00:07:36]Um this can't be 7 8 or 3. So, this is five Oh, wait, it can't be five either.

[00:07:43]Hold on.

[00:07:44]Well, first of all, these can't be five.

[00:07:46]Yeah, I missed following up on that five, I guess. Five's on one of these three.

[00:07:49]But, uh What What are these down to?

[00:07:54]Um cuz they're not 5 8. So, 1 2 We need three 7 9, and this can't be 3 7. So, this is a naked nine.

[00:08:03]And this is down to 3 7.

[00:08:06]This can't be 3 7, so it's only 5 8.

[00:08:11]All right.

[00:08:14]So, I place this nine, these nines look in.

[00:08:16]Placing the Or not placing, but putting the nine in one of these two.

[00:08:20]Uh 3 7 Five and eight are over here.

[00:08:28]Yeah.

[00:08:32]Did I miss anything else looking into this box?

[00:08:35]Doesn't look like it.

[00:08:37]Okay.

[00:08:39]I want to look at this whole box, though. We need It's five digits left.

[00:08:42]We need a 1 2 3 6 7.

[00:08:46]Now, I don't think we get more out of that. It was It was this row, and we already looked at it. All right.

[00:08:52]How about this column now? It's down to four.

[00:08:54]Cuz we placed that nine. We need a 2 4 5 6.

[00:08:59]We know these aren't six. These are 2 4 5. Top one's not even five.

[00:09:04]That makes a 2 4 pair in this top row.

[00:09:06]The best time to find a pair is when you pencil.

[00:09:10]So, I penciled this 2 4, and immediately scanned its vicinity for another 2 4, and I found it here.

[00:09:17]So, we have that pair. And that means there's only three digits left in this row. We need a 1 8 9. 1 8 9. So, this is 1 9 only.

[00:09:27]This is 8 9 only, and this is 1 8 only.

[00:09:30]Okay?

[00:09:32]Um what was this 2 4 5 6?

[00:09:36]They could be any of them.

[00:09:40]Hmm.

[00:09:45]Interesting.

[00:09:46]I'm noticing this five looking down, this five looking and putting a five on one of these, too. Trying to see if anything else is restricted here.

[00:09:53]Is there any digit we we haven't mentioned here? Uh one, a two, no.

[00:09:57]Three. The three.

[00:10:00]So, three's in one of these three.

[00:10:02]Doesn't really help.

[00:10:05]4 5 6 7 8 9. No, the rest are mentioned.

[00:10:10]Okay, let's um let's move on, I guess. Let's keep looking at rows.

[00:10:16]There isn't another row that looks tasty. Let's look at columns.

[00:10:21]No, no columns, either. All right, how about boxes?

[00:10:26]Um is any of this pointing or claiming, or is it all just markings? That's the question.

[00:10:36]3 8 The six and the seven.

[00:10:44]What I'm doing is I'm making sure that the corner marks that I have are actually getting respected, cuz sometimes I'll pencil and I'll not notice a corner mark.

[00:10:51]Um the threes, the eights, and the nines.

[00:10:57]It's all respected.

[00:11:00]The eight's here. Yeah, it's fine. Sixes and sevens.

[00:11:08]Okay, there there really isn't anywhere obvious to look here.

[00:11:12]Makes me think I missed some geometry.

[00:11:15]Uh there's nothing looking through here.

[00:11:17]I'm looking for crossings.

[00:11:20]Two givens that share a a row or column, like these two share a column in the same box.

[00:11:25]We want to look at what might go through that.

[00:11:30]So, the three, for example.

[00:11:31]Unfortunately, we don't have any help on threes.

[00:11:37]The four does it, too. Ooh.

[00:11:39]The four is already placed in the box.

[00:11:42]Never mind.

[00:11:44]All right, not there.

[00:11:48]Uh >> [snorts] >> We already looked here. We did this already.

[00:11:56]It would just be here. This is already penciled 3 9 and 2 4.

[00:12:01]All right. Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that these aren't two forks. We did find that two four pair.

[00:12:08]So removing two and four from these, does that do anything?

[00:12:13]I just I just don't see how it helps.

[00:12:18]All right. So what else did I miss?

[00:12:22]1 2 6 7 We already know those aren't worth penciling.

[00:12:32]Maybe I should pay attention to this box. I mean, it's a lot of digits left.

[00:12:35]It's six digits left, but the nine looks in here.

[00:12:44]Maybe I should look at these two digits.

[00:12:47]So one, they could be two. I'm going to mark it out, but I might delete it if it's too many. We need a two, not three.

[00:12:54]The four could go here, but not here.

[00:12:57]The five can go here, but not here.

[00:13:00]The six can go here. Oh, actually, neither can be six.

[00:13:03]We need a seven.

[00:13:06]Both can be seven. Eight, nine. So they are down to 2 5 7 2 4 7.

[00:13:16]What digit haven't we accounted for here? Looks like it's the three.

[00:13:21]So three is here or here.

[00:13:24]I don't think that helps.

[00:13:28]Mhm.

[00:13:32]Okay.

[00:13:34]So, what am I missing?

[00:13:38]Look for more restricted cells, I guess.

[00:13:42]These can't be three or four.

[00:13:45]They're not 179, they're not 34.

[00:13:47]This one's also not six, so it's not one, it could be two, it's not three, it could be four Oh, it can't be four, it could be five, not six, seven, could be eight. So, 258.

[00:14:00]So, we don't have a whole lot penciled in this column, but one question we might be asking is do we have a 258 naked triple?

[00:14:07]If you're curious without having to pencil the whole column, what you can do is you can think about what are the three remaining digits besides the three givens we have and 258.

[00:14:17]So, those remaining digits are the one um 69, 169.

[00:14:24]So, if there's any cells here that can't be all of 169, then we're good to go. That would be a 258.

[00:14:33]I'm not seeing that, but I am seeing this cell can't be 16 and this cell can't be 19. Oh, it can't be Actually, no, this cell can't be 169 cuz we have uh the six is cornered.

[00:14:44]So, we actually found it. Okay. So, this is down to 258. So, let's just double-check. It's not one, it could be two.

[00:14:51]Um it's not three or four, it could be five.

[00:14:55]It's not six, we have the sixes cornered and pointing.

[00:14:59]Uh not seven, could be eight, and it's not nine cuz there's nine in the box.

[00:15:03]So, that is a 258 triple um leaving behind 169.

[00:15:11]We know this one's not 16, so that's a naked nine.

[00:15:14]And before I follow up on that, I'm going to write 16 as the remaining digits here.

[00:15:18]So, it does place the nine in this box, which gives us the 819 here. The 9 also looks over giving us the 3 9 here. And the uh 1 in this box tells us that's 6 and that's 1.

[00:15:31]All right. So, that is what we needed to spot.

[00:15:35]Um I didn't actually think we'd find that, but uh that's why we look, right?

[00:15:39]So, the 1 in this box is placed here.

[00:15:42]The two 1s look down, one looks in, placing the 1 here. 1s are now done.

[00:15:47]The four digits left in this box are 2 4 5 7.

[00:15:53]Um we know these aren't 7, so these are 2 4 5.

[00:15:57]Surprisingly, these are any of 2 4 5 7.

[00:15:59]I I feel like we're slowly collapsing.

[00:16:02]Maybe I should look at better locating fruit. This is 2 6 7.

[00:16:06]So, we know that the 7s in one of these two.

[00:16:10]These three are 2 3 6.

[00:16:14]I'm only seeing this 6 here.

[00:16:18]Okay. Uh 2 3 6, so the 7 can only go here in this box. That gives us the 7 in this box.

[00:16:24]That's another 2 4. We have so many 2 4s.

[00:16:29]Um Hm.

[00:16:35]I'm trying to figure out where I want to look next.

[00:16:38]We just got a bunch of digits.

[00:16:40]The 6, the 9.

[00:16:44]Maybe maybe this box?

[00:16:48]So, 2 3 4 5. Yeah, the 3 is in one of Oh, the 3 is placed. That's even better.

[00:16:53]3 looks in. This 3 looks in. Places 3, which then places the 5.

[00:16:58]Um this is down to 2 4.

[00:17:01]Oopsie.

[00:17:02]Down to 2 4. That 2 4 pair says that's not a 2. Um this is the 2.

[00:17:07]That's 9 and 5. That's 6 and 3. That's 6.

[00:17:11]Places the 6 here and the 6 here.

[00:17:14]Uh the 9 gets placed. It can't be here anymore, So, that's nine which makes that eight.

[00:17:18]Um do I clean up or this is two four. We have so many two fours that need to get resolved.

[00:17:25]Um I'd rather not clean up, but I guess I will.

[00:17:32]All right.

[00:17:36]Isn't that a perpetual state of being?

[00:17:38]I don't want to clean up, but I guess I will.

[00:17:41]Um five eight and and something else. Uh three.

[00:17:46]All right.

[00:17:52]Mhm.

[00:17:54]Where am I looking? Look at all all these two fours are crazy. I bet I bet you we could find a um well, I don't know if we could, but it seems likely we could find a um um remote pair. So, just just to demonstrate that what that what I mean by that um because it it's a fun technique, remote pair. So, I'm not going to use it, but we'll see if there is one here before we accidentally finish the puzzle before I get to explain it.

[00:18:21]So, I'm going to call this cell green.

[00:18:23]Whatever digit the solution ends up being, I'm going to call that green. So, we know green is a two or a four.

[00:18:29]Now, let's just pick this one here.

[00:18:32]This cannot be green because it's in the same column as green, but it's also a two or four. We're going to call that purple. So, if green is two, purple is four. If green is four, purple is two.

[00:18:41]That's the point. And so, we can actually propagate it kind of like a virus. So, this pair says this has to be green. This pair says this has to be purple. That makes this one green. That makes this one purple.

[00:18:52]Um and this one's purple.

[00:18:55]And this one's green.

[00:18:57]So, what we'd be looking for is, for example, right here. This would be useful if we were going to use it.

[00:19:04]Um I'll leave these colored, by the way.

[00:19:06]Um but this cell here, you'll note that it cannot be purple because it shares a column with purple and it cannot be green because it shares a row with green. So you can kind of think about that this is a this one of these is two, one of these is four. You can think about it as this seeing a two four pair and so it can't be a two or four so it's going to be a five or a seven.

[00:19:24]It actually can't be five. We should have marked that.

[00:19:27]So actually if you have these marked as two four seven that makes it even more powerful. We'd be able to place the seven here.

[00:19:33]Because we know it's not two, we know it's not four because we I don't know which is which but we know it's not either of them.

[00:19:39]So that that would be a way to progress this puzzle but certainly not the intended way by whatever algorithm constructed it.

[00:19:47]The eight's in one of these two. I feel like I just kind of have to pencil these and find out what's going on.

[00:19:52]So why don't we just think about this row two three four five?

[00:19:59]I mean it can be any of those, right?

[00:20:01]How about this row two three four eight?

[00:20:04]I just don't think these are the key. I must be missing something simpler.

[00:20:10]Uh the fives, the sevens.

[00:20:14]Uh two five, two eight Do any of these pairs actually just affect their row or column or box?

[00:20:27]No.

[00:20:30]Hm.

[00:20:33]So what's the what's the real step? It should just be pointing claiming pair triple.

[00:20:38]Something like that.

[00:20:42]Maybe there's a hidden single I haven't noticed.

[00:20:48]Since we're since we're at the end of the puzzle I'm just going to mark these up even though they're more than three.

[00:20:52]Uh cuz I'm just not seeing it. This is two three four five. Oops. Two three four five.

[00:20:58]And this one is two three four eight.

[00:21:04]Eight's in one of these two.

[00:21:06]7, 2 Um It's a hidden 3 8 pair here.

[00:21:14]That's what I'm missing.

[00:21:16]None of these can be three or eight.

[00:21:18]Let's find out why. So, we have a 3 8 here.

[00:21:21]Um we have the 3 8 here given.

[00:21:24]And we have the 3 8 here.

[00:21:26]So, where do three and eight go in the column? They go right here.

[00:21:30]And so, this can't be 2 4 and this can't be five.

[00:21:35]Now.

[00:21:39]Remove 2 4 5 7-ish from these. Not sevens, 2 4 5.

[00:21:44]What do we do with that? You'll note that this one also saw it a remote 2 4 pair, by the way.

[00:21:51]Um I hadn't noticed that till just now.

[00:21:57]So, did this not do it? Removed five from here.

[00:22:01]Ah, so what happened is Oh, sorry.

[00:22:04]Oh, what happened is five in this column is now only here because we removed it from these two. This is the last one for five in the column. I noticed that by having these I was like that we removed five from here. Now, five's in these two and I noticed in this box five's in these two.

[00:22:18]And so, as a result, um we need a five in this column, which goes there.

[00:22:22]All right. And so, now this is a green 2 4.

[00:22:25]So, now we would be able to eliminate 2 4 from here because it sees this green and this purple and this purple. But, it sees a green and a purple. So, this isn't 2 4 either.

[00:22:35]Um just remote pairs are neat. When when when you have a ton of the same uh bi-value in the grid, doesn't hurt to color them if you're stuck.

[00:22:45]Um are we really not done yet? I got this five.

[00:22:49]Okay, I'm going to mark that five's right here and here.

[00:22:55]What did that do? This is down to 2 4 7.

[00:23:02]Um Oh, we have a 247 triple here.

[00:23:05]So, yeah, this is a hidden 35 pair is another way to put that.

[00:23:09]So, that makes it not 24 as I was talking about.

[00:23:12]Um So, not 24.

[00:23:18]That leaves four in this box. Four can only be here. And so, um we know that all of our purples are going to end up four and all of our greens are going to end up two. We can get rid of the colors.

[00:23:29]And that should finish the whole thing.

[00:23:30]So, that's eight, that's three, that's five, that's two. We get the five, three, and eight. We get the seven and two. That's four and seven. That's three and four. And we're done.

[00:23:38]Wow.

[00:23:39]Um some tricky steps at the end there. So, like just compiling on or compounding hidden pairs, hidden Yeah, the hidden 38 and the hidden What was it? It was it Was it this 35, I think?

[00:23:54]Pretty um pretty nasty spots, to be honest.

[00:23:58]All right. Well, how'd you do?