NYT Hard Sudoku Walkthrough | May 6, 2026

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Hello. Let's do the New York Times hard sodoku for May 6th, 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.

[00:00:11]Starting in this box, we've got 1479.

[00:00:14]Two ones looking. Putting a one in one of these two. Nothing vertical with ones. We have the fours done here.

[00:00:22]All right. The sevens looking putting a seven in one of these two.

[00:00:27]All right. All right, we want to keep an eye on sevens in this column because we just need to eliminate seven from here and it's stuck in this box, but not quite yet. We do have two sevens here.

[00:00:36]The seven helps. Puts a seven in one of these two. And then the nine.

[00:00:42]Um, nine's in one of these. Oh, actually, I messed. Okay. Yeah, these nines look up. So, this nine doesn't actually do anything to help. This nine doesn't do anything to help, but it does still place the nine in this box. These nines look in putting a nine in one of these two. Now what we found is a hidden seven pair. Why? Well, in this box we have said that seven needs to be in one of these two and that nine needs to be in one of these two. That means one has to be seven, the other has to be nine.

[00:01:07]Now what that means is we have eliminated anything else from those two cells. So we want to think about what we eliminated. Easiest way right now is probably just thinking about what's left in this box because it's only four digits. We need a 1 3 6 8. So the eight looks in and that means that this is actually eight's in one of these two. So this is actually hidden 1 eight pair and then this is going to be a pair of the other two that I already forgot three and six. It looks like we get the three six pair the one eight pair and the 79 pair. That's pretty nice. That means this is a pair for the rest of the row.

[00:01:41]We need a two which actually can only go here and the final digit is five. It looks like there's a pair left in this row. Uh, we need a two, which can only go here. And we need a three. And then a pair left in this box. One, two. We need a three.

[00:02:03]Uh, what did I miss? 35. Okay, not resolved. And the pair left in this box is 68. This eight resolves it. So that's six. That's eight. That's pretty nice.

[00:02:14]All right. Nothing else to do in this band, that's for sure. So we'll move on to the next band here. So, we've got the twos looking in here. And I'll just scan upwards as well. So, we're going to find almost every digit has a buddy looking here. Nothing. Okay. So, that's it for the two. We've got the ones looking down. We have the sevens looking down. This seven helps. Placing this seven. Let's follow up on that right away. Seven's in one of these two. Now, what I'm noticing has happened here is that we have lined up these sevens in box one and box three. So the question is where does the seven go in this column? Because it's not in box one and it's not in box three. It's also not here. So seven's in one of these two for the column. And that does what's called claiming. So this box is going to sorry this column needs a seven. It's going to be here or here. Wherever it places the seven, it will place it in box six. So the rest of box six can't have sevens in them. So we eliminated seven from all these.

[00:03:12]All right. Um, that was the one, the seven, and then the nine.

[00:03:19]I'm not seeing anything to do with nine.

[00:03:23]And then we've got twos looking down.

[00:03:25]Putting a two in one of these two.

[00:03:28]And then the fives are done.

[00:03:33]We got those twos. No crossings. I think that's all we really get out of that band. There's not much going on. We have the seven and the eight here. So, the two eights look up. Putting an eight in one of these three.

[00:03:46]Um, these eights look in. Placing the eight in this box. Now, these two eights look in. Putting it one of these two.

[00:03:54]All right. The sixes look in. Putting a six in one of these two.

[00:04:01]Uh, these sixes look back. Putting And this six helps. Putting a six in one of these two. The eights.

[00:04:08]And then the nines.

[00:04:13]All right, I am actually uh yeah, nine in this column joins the seven. So this can't be nine and this can't be nine and oh these aren't nine. And then we have a nine here. And so actually the nine needs to go in one of these two. Those overlap giving us a hidden 79 pair. So we want to think about the rest of the column.

[00:04:34]It's one one three and eight. Looks like bottom one's not eight. That's all I'm seeing.

[00:04:42]Okay.

[00:04:43]Hidden 79. We removed 138ish.

[00:04:48]So the eight looking up. These aren't eight. Eight's in one of these two.

[00:04:53]The one not really helpful. Three is definitely not. Okay.

[00:04:58]So, we did fill this box row. 7 8 6 5. Okay.

[00:05:04]The five looks in.

[00:05:07]No fives help above. There's a five and one of these three that points in with this five. This five looks down. Putting a five one of these two.

[00:05:15]Okay. What about 568 here?

[00:05:19]Um 568.

[00:05:28]Not seeing anything new to do there.

[00:05:31]All right. Well, considering the top band is almost done, we're we're not hugely restricted. I'm going to look at columns first just because we have all this done. So I think columns might be more restricted. So this column we need a 1369.

[00:05:48]So this is 369.

[00:05:50]This is 139. This is 136.

[00:05:55]All right. Um this column we need a 1 2 3 5. This can't be one two. So this is 35. This can't be one. So it's 2 35.

[00:06:05]This is one, two, three. This is any of them. H lot of three fives floating around this column. We need a 3, four, five, eight.

[00:06:18]This can't be eight. So, it's 3, four, five.

[00:06:21]What is going on here? All right.

[00:06:24]Nothing useful so far.

[00:06:27]Are there any pencil marks I may have ignored?

[00:06:39]138.

[00:06:42]I'm not seeing anything. What's this?

[00:06:44]3458 H.

[00:06:53]Okay.

[00:06:55]So, I want to look at what do I want to look at? Maybe this column. We need a 1, two, four, five, 9. This can't be one, two, so it's four, five, nine. This can't be two, five, or nine. So, one, two, four, five, nine. So, only one, four.

[00:07:14]1 2 4 5.

[00:07:17]Nothing. All right. Maybe I should look at rows then. I'm going to look at this row. We need a 1 3 4 68.

[00:07:25]1 3 4 68. So this is 346 1 3 4 68 H.

[00:07:38]Anything else to look at? I want to look at these two cells that aren't the two corner marks. They aren't the two and the seven in addition to 568. So and they also can't Oh, yeah. I guess they already couldn't be two. Uh well, let's just take a look. We need a 1 3 4 9.

[00:07:59]So this is 134. Is the nine looking into anything? No.

[00:08:04]Nothing we haven't already found.

[00:08:08]This is all of 1349.

[00:08:12]Wow. Whatever this is, it's hiding.

[00:08:14]Well, did I miss any verticals?

[00:08:28]Okay.

[00:08:33]Is it over here? Maybe.

[00:08:37]All right. Let's think about this whole box. We need a 1 3 4 6 eight. 1 3 4 68.

[00:08:47]So this is 3 46 13 46 3 4 6 Nothing.

[00:09:02]What am I missing here?

[00:09:11]I'm looking for like geometry or something or some crossings I might have missed or something along those lines. Maybe this cell it's not one or five. So it could be 2 3 4 and that's it. Right? It's not one. It could be two three four.

[00:09:32]It's not five, six, seven, eight, nine.

[00:09:40]I just guess I just haven't found what I need to find yet.

[00:09:45]This isn't two, five, one.

[00:09:51]So, it's not one, two, it could be three, four. It's not five, six, seven, eight, or nine. It's only 3, four. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, uh, nine. Yeah.

[00:10:06]So, I've got one and nine. One, two, and nine. Looking here.

[00:10:13]One, two, nine. The nine looks in. The nine looks down. Nine's one of these two. What about the one? We don't have any help on the one.

[00:10:24]H.

[00:10:32]There's something something interesting here.

[00:10:38]I don't even know if my logic's right.

[00:10:39]Let's walk through it together. So, I've got one, two, and nine looking down here. So, one, two, and nine need to go in these four cells.

[00:10:48]Now, you'll notice that that is required to displace either the five or six in the box.

[00:10:56]Because if I'm putting one, two, and nine here, I can't put both a five and a six. You'll notice that we kind of want a five and or a six down here, but we can only put one of them in order to fit one, two, and nine in. And so the five six that isn't played. Well, first of all, we can't displace both the five and the six because they both displace here.

[00:11:17]So that means that these are only from one two 956. We can eliminate that, these threes, for example. Then the other thing that I'm noticing is that makes this this has to be the overflow 56. And so this is only 56. I don't know if there's like a clean way to prove that other than kind of this analysis that I just did.

[00:11:36]It feels a bit more advanced than what I'd like to do here. So I'm kind of wondering if there's a simpler thing that's happened. Like maybe this is a three- four pair. So let's take a look.

[00:11:44]It's not one two. It could be three four. It's not 5 6 7 8 9. Yeah. So this is just a three four pair. Uh B. Okay.

[00:11:51]Yeah. So I guess the easier thing to say was that well easier is that this was a 12569 hidden quintuple.

[00:12:02]Yeah, much easier, right? 12569 hidden quintupil. So all of the uh all of these cells are the corner mark plus maybe a one as an option. But anyway, the 34 pair is is 34 pair. Uh so these can't be three. Um, and what's left is 129 here, 125 here, and 56 only here. So, anyway, that's a that's a bit better than what I had originally said. But, uh, kind of a neat way to find it. Even if it was a silly way to find it, I still enjoyed it. 1369 here.

[00:12:39]All right. So, I'm questioning how many of these corner marks I need.

[00:12:48]Um so what's this 3 four pair get us?

[00:12:52]Removed three from these two. So now in this column three is in one of these two uh 34 pair. So the remainder of this column is 5678.

[00:13:06]So this is 68 only. Oopsie. This is 68 only. 5678.

[00:13:20]Can I do anything else with this? Three, four. One, two, three, four, four, five.

[00:13:28]Did that really not help as much as I hoped?

[00:13:40]169 three. One of these two three four.

[00:13:47]Um I'm really not seeing a good followup here. There must be more to find.

[00:14:00]Two and seven. And where am I supposed to be looking?

[00:14:09]3 4 58.

[00:14:18]There's got to be like a corner mark or something I ignored.

[00:14:24]Not sure where it would be.

[00:14:28]Seven. Eight.

[00:14:32]Five or six. Um, is the forest here somewhere? It's not super helpful.

[00:14:56]134. These are so different.

[00:15:04]Maybe there's like a geometry I missed.

[00:15:15]245. It's just the four.

[00:15:19]Oh boy.

[00:15:24]So one, two, 469.

[00:15:33]2 4 six and then the 35.

[00:15:53]So, wow, this top band made it feel like it was going to be a quick puzzle, but I am stumped. Okay, I may have to just pencil more things.

[00:16:11]I'm going to look more carefully at what we've already penciled, though. I'm going to look really carefully.

[00:16:16]3 4 6 9 3 4 5 6 9 7 8.

[00:16:31]The only thing keeping this from being a hidden 78 pair is this cell here. That could be seven.

[00:16:39]Something to think about.

[00:16:42]6814 346138.

[00:16:46]Is there something in like this row is empty, but is there something I'm missing about it?

[00:16:52]This doesn't seem like it.

[00:16:57]This is all of 16 uh 1369.

[00:17:07]We know the three is here. We know it's claiming seven and eight are claiming here. Is that helpful? No, because we have 78 here and 78 here.

[00:17:22]Sixes, the twos.

[00:17:27]Eights. No, nothing.

[00:17:42]I think I looked at these already.

[00:17:47]I'll take another look. We need a Well, they can't be two because the twos in the box. Okay. So, they could be one.

[00:17:58]They're not two. They could be three.

[00:18:01]They could be four. They're not five.

[00:18:04]They could be six. They're not.

[00:18:08]This could be seven. They're not eight.

[00:18:10]This could be nine. Yeah, there's just nothing helpful here.

[00:18:15]1 3 4 six.

[00:18:19]Basically, it's just not eight for the row.

[00:18:32]Did this 79 not do more?

[00:18:38]Felt important at the time. Uh, anything down here? One, two, three, four. That said, seven and nine, 3, four, five.

[00:18:59]I need something that sees one, two, nine. I don't have that. It sees one and nine.

[00:19:06]So, this is two, three, four, five.

[00:19:15]One, two, three, five.

[00:19:21]What could it be?

[00:19:36]So this can't be 5 six or 7 8 9. So it's from 1 2 3 4.

[00:19:49]But it's all of 1 2 3 4 as far as I can tell.

[00:19:54]I don't know what I'm missing.

[00:20:25]I'm just rescanning everything. I don't know what else to do.

[00:20:32]What could I have missed?

[00:20:50]I don't know.

[00:20:52]I'm going to pencil every cell. It's my only choice at this point. Maybe there's a quad or something I need to find to be unusual, but um penciling everything's a pain. Uh, I need to target some good ones first.

[00:21:16]So, we know these were, let's see, this one was This one was so many. I don't even want to pencil it. This one was four. This was uh one, three, four.

[00:21:30]What did I miss? Six.

[00:21:37]And then yeah, this column needed 5678.

[00:21:42]It's all of them. This needed three 1 1369. It's all of them. Problem is this row's got nothing.

[00:21:52]This is not a two. So it's 1 145 9 1459 So far nothing.

[00:22:16]This is one, two, three, five.

[00:22:19]Trying to scan each one carefully after I mark.

[00:22:24]See if I might have missed something.

[00:22:28]Five, six, seven, eight, three, six, nine.

[00:22:39]Okay.

[00:22:40]This is 3458.

[00:22:46]2 3 4 58. Is that six? Yeah.

[00:22:50]These are 2, three, four, five, six.

[00:22:56]Two, three, four, five, six.

[00:22:58]2, three, four, five. Not a six.

[00:23:11]Two, three, four, five. So, one and nine are remaining.

[00:23:26]Um, is there anything else worth marking?

[00:23:29]Maybe in this box.

[00:23:32]Um, let's just mark the whole box up.

[00:23:35]So, we do need a one, which could be anywhere. The two is marked here.

[00:23:40]The three could be anywhere.

[00:23:43]The four could be anywhere.

[00:23:46]We have five, six. The seven's up here.

[00:23:49]We have eight. The nine could be anywhere. Oh, not here.

[00:23:54]So, 1 2 3 4.

[00:24:03]Guess I might as well mark these up.

[00:24:04]They're the last two. We need a 1 3 4 6 7 8 9. But they're not 79. And this one's not an eight.

[00:24:15]Oh, this is a 1 3 4 six then.

[00:24:24]So, what's the what's the hidden triple that I was supposed to see? Let's see how hard that would have been. Uh 279.

[00:24:34]So, this top cell can't be 279.

[00:24:40]And then we have the 279 triple here, meaning these can't be 279.

[00:24:48]And then these aren't either. Oo, tough.

[00:24:50]So I should have seen a 279 hidden triple based on this two, this 79 pair, and this 279 up here apparently.

[00:24:59]Otherwise, you have to mark four in these cells to see that there's a quad.

[00:25:04]But anyway, these are down to 279 only.

[00:25:08]And this can't be seven or nine. So that's a two.

[00:25:12]All right.

[00:25:14]And that places the two in this box, which then places the nine. Is there anything else in there? Right. These can't be nine. These can't be two. And over here, that resolves the seven.

[00:25:25]Nine. That's a seven. Let's get clean that up.

[00:25:33]Uh why did it stall? Okay, let me think about the digits. I just got so nine's looking that looks nine's in one of these two. I got this two.

[00:25:45]These two's looking two is in one of these two. I got this seven part of the seven nine part of that seven. We got this nine, right?

[00:25:58]Uh we know that the Oh, the nine in this box is here. That's the only place for it. We know the four is in one of these two. So, this can't be a four anymore.

[00:26:09]1368 138.

[00:26:16]So, we know the one is in one of these two for the column. And that eliminates one from the rest of the box that's claiming.

[00:26:27]I think I'm too marked up now.

[00:26:30]Let's just see if we can continue.

[00:26:43]What am I missing?

[00:26:46]Oh, just a one, five, six triple here.

[00:26:49]So, these can't be one. That leaves three, four, and one. That places the one in this box.

[00:26:56]Um, this is an eight. We get the one and the eight here. Okay. Down to three, six here. Over here, this can't be eight. So that's a six. This is a hidden seven eight pair now. But let's see if we need that. That's three. That's one. That's four.

[00:27:11]Okay. So these aren't one, four.

[00:27:14]And then so these aren't 59.

[00:27:18]Yeah, they're not 56. Uh so that's five.

[00:27:20]That's one. That's six. For here we get the five 95.

[00:27:25]We get our seven and nine.

[00:27:28]That's our three and one.

[00:27:30]Eight and seven. That's 2 3 4 2. We get the three.

[00:27:35]Five and three. 4 8 6 5 4 3 4 6 63.

[00:27:42]Oo, that was a nasty one. Really nasty spot in in this column, the hidden triple. The only other way to spot it was what I did, which is just almost basically fully mark everything so that we can notice the the naked quad there.

[00:27:56]Um, I don't know. It didn't occur to me to to look at the 279 in this box against this column, but maybe it should have.

[00:28:06]Maybe it should have. All right. Well, let me know how you did. And if you enjoyed this, why not leave a like, subscribe, and a kind comment below.