Sudoku solution – New York Times 25 May 2026 Hard level sudoku

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:03][music] [music] Hello fellow Sudokans. Welcome to Zen and the Art of the Guardian Sudoku puzzle. It's Monday the 25th of May 2026. I hope you are keeping well today and ready for the week ahead. Uh it's Monday and so we fortify ourselves for work or play or whatever it is you do for your week uh by playing a game of sedoku. Of course, this will be the New York Times hardle sodoku puzzle in just a second. Uh I see often see on my telephone I get messages about uh you know lend money, borrow money usually. I mean in Thai borrow money quickly and uh stuff like that. And I usually, of course, I don't click on them. I delete them and uh block them as spam.

[00:00:55]Report try to report them as spam if I if if it's available an option on my phone. And uh apparently I'm not the only one. Uh this happens quite frequently. Uh and the Bank of Thailand has made uh applications to the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society here in Thailand uh for 79 to to block 79 apps that are apparently loan applications and they have said at least 57 of them are unregistered uh so far. Um apparently it's a it's a scam. A lot of it is just to scam their way in. But it means that they are scamming. Usually it means that they are scamming people who are the worst off.

[00:01:38]You know, it's not bad enough that these scammers take people's money. They often take money from the vulnerable who are desperate to try to uh get more money.

[00:01:48]Uh you know, people who need to take out loans are probably, you know, the worst off in society.

[00:01:55]And uh there we are. scammers just uh you know get their details and get more of their money. Um it's an unfortunate and terrible thing. [sighs] Uh let's hope that that um it declines rapidly uh if the police are involved. [sighs] All right, let's get on with our game of Sudoku, shall we? Let's see what have we got for today. New York Times. Here we go.

[00:02:24]Uh, where's that first number? Normally the first number just arrives as if by magic.

[00:02:51]There it is.

[00:02:53]Oops. Eight blocks up here and eight blocks across there. So, there's our first magic number. The magic eight ball.

[00:03:12]Sorry, I'm yawning again.

[00:03:17]Like I said, uh it's good job this is not on camera because I know yawning is infectious. I don't want to start you yawning. You might fall asleep before we get to the end of the puzzle.

[00:03:27]Where is everything today? Come on. Come on. Where are you?

[00:03:34]All right, let's go around in order. See what we can pick up.

[00:03:51]>> [snorts] >> Oh, I don't see a digit four. Oh, okay.

[00:04:30]We are fourless, I guess. Not flawless, but flawless.

[00:04:37]Lacking digit four.

[00:04:39]Okay.

[00:04:43]>> [sighs and snorts] [snorts] [sighs] >> So we do have a pair of three and nine blocking down here. So we have three and nine in those squares there. So now three blocks down here, three blocks down here, three blocks across there. So that's our three Uh, we're looking for one, four, and eight in these squares. And then we've got a one and eight. So, we get our first digit four on the board. Although, we already knew digit four was down there somewhere. We now have a physical digit four placed. So, we can click on it to see if any others crop up soon.

[00:06:23]And anyway, our eight blocks this square. So, there's our eight, and here's the one.

[00:06:45]And we have one blocking this square and this square. So, in the bottom row, there's our digit one.

[00:09:51]uh may may lead to nothing, but we've got one and eight blocking here. One and eight blocking. Oh no, that's not enough.

[00:09:59]That's not enough. Sorry.

[00:10:02]I thought I'd found a pair, but no, not true.

[00:10:17]All right, let's have another look at this. So, I said we have three and nine here. So, what's missing from there? One 48.

[00:10:26]Is that any use? 148.

[00:10:31]Um, not sure. So these squares are not 1 4 or 8. They have to be five 6 7 Okay, this is three and nine.

[00:11:03]So these are [sighs] not three or nine but four five 7 8 4 5 7 8.

[00:11:24]Okay. So we've got eight um blocking these squares here. So we're looking for eight in one of these squares here.

[00:11:30]We've got the eight blocking there. So that must be an eight, mustn't it?

[00:14:44]We've got three and nine in this block here and we've got three and nine um blocking here. So in fact this square and this square I already know this is a 39. It's a three and nine. Right? So we've got a 39 in this square as well. So, we've got a pair of three and nine in those squares.

[00:15:07]Uh, does that do anything?

[00:15:11]Don't know. These squares then are not three or nine. They are four, six, 7, 8.

[00:15:30]I don't think that's enough, is it?

[00:15:50][sighs] No. So, even though I found that 39 pair, there's no unique rectangle because that would involve the six, right? So obviously there's already a number there that's not going to help us. Um does the 39 mean anything in this column?

[00:16:11]I don't know.

[00:16:13]Uh 345 79. Is that right? 345 79. Three, four, five, seven, nine.

[00:16:39]Ah, it does. Oh, not it does not.

[00:16:42][laughter] No, it does not give me what I was suddenly thinking that I thought I'd got.

[00:16:54]Oh, I don't know. Okay, I spend I'm spending too long on this game, so I should finish the game off now. And the way that I can finish it will be using pencil marks. Uh you finish it how you like, but I'm just going to go ahead and do that right now. So, we'll put three and nine in there. We'll put the ones in those squares there. We'll put the four and the eight somewhere.

[00:17:18]And of course, we're going to get a pair of fours over here like this. We've also got five blocking across there. That gives us fives up there and across there and uh six blocking up there. So that means that's a pair of sixes there.

[00:17:39]Sixes are a pair over there as well.

[00:17:42]Let's go through the numbers. Ones are in those squares there.

[00:17:49]Pair of ones there.

[00:17:52]Twos are you limited to those squares there.

[00:17:58]Three pair of threes there.

[00:18:16]Not much else than four yet.

[00:18:31]Sevens are there. Sevens are there somewhere.

[00:18:57]and uh that's it for me, I think.

[00:19:07]Okay, so let's go ahead and finish this section off. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Can go anywhere.

[00:19:15]And down here, seven can go anywhere.

[00:19:18]And the missing digit is eight, which can also go anywhere.

[00:19:24]Oh, no, it's not. Sorry. Take that back.

[00:19:27]It's not eight, is it? Five. Sorry.

[00:19:29]Which can go anywhere. Sorry.

[00:19:32]Five can go anywhere. There we go.

[00:19:40]So, let's try this bottom section. One, two, three.

[00:19:44]Four. Of course, we have no idea about four. Uh, five blocking down here and there.

[00:19:53]Seven.

[00:19:55]Any of those squares there.

[00:19:58]And nine.

[00:20:01]Any of those squares there.

[00:20:05]And the four can still go anywhere, which is annoying, but still got to do it, I think.

[00:20:15]on this side. One blocking down here puts one into those squares there. Two, three, four. Of course, have no knowledge yet. Five. What do we know?

[00:20:28]Don't know.

[00:20:32]Seven, eight, and nine.

[00:20:36]Like this.

[00:20:42]Yeah, with that four it makes it quite heavy, doesn't it?

[00:20:53]Okay, let's try this. Of course, I know this is a 39 pair, but only so I'll try to remember that. 1 2 3 four. So, four can't go in those in that square because that's a three nine pair I worked out a moment ago.

[00:21:11]Five. Then blocks like this.

[00:21:18]Seven.

[00:21:21]Eight.

[00:21:22]And nine. Blocking across there.

[00:21:28]Should be like that. One. Two. Three.

[00:21:33]Four.

[00:21:34]No.

[00:21:41]Five.

[00:21:48]Okay, we are done there. Okay, so we've got a pair of four and five here. So we that means this has to be a nine.

[00:21:57]So that's going to be a nine up there.

[00:22:01]So let's get rid of some candidate nines.

[00:22:17]And as I say, this is a pair of four and five. So we can also get rid of that candidate four. Don't need that one anymore.

[00:22:35]Um, let's click on the digits and see if we've got anything new.

[00:23:00]Remember, don't make the mistake of thinking we have a unique rectangle like this. We do not because that's four blocks, not two blocks. So, a beginner's mistake there would be to look for a unique rectangle in that situation. That would be wrong.

[00:23:26]Okay, we've got five blocking across here. Five blocking across here. That must be a five then.

[00:23:33]So we can get rid of the fives there.

[00:23:40]And now there's only one digit missing.

[00:23:42]That's a seven. And we can get rid of that candidate seven down there.

[00:24:42]We do have digit nine somewhere in that top section. Now obviously there is still work to be done.

[00:24:57]Okay, we haven't quite got to the end yet.

[00:25:19]All right. So, let's try this block here. And now we've got to remember not to put in any four fives in those squares there because we've got our four and five already. So let's see what else we need. Three.

[00:25:32]Three blocks up here. So we get threes in those squares there.

[00:25:37]Four, as I said, can't go in those squares. So we get four there. Five is in six. What do we know about six? Six blocks up here. So we can put six in those squares there.

[00:25:50]Seven blocks up here.

[00:25:53]And that's about it.

[00:25:59]And uh there's one more block to go.

[00:26:02]Three can go in those squares there.

[00:26:09]Four.

[00:26:11]Still don't know enough about digit four. Oh, we've got another pair of four and five here. Okay, just seen it. Got to get rid of the four and the five there.

[00:26:21]Okay. So, this is four and five here.

[00:26:24]So, no fours or fives in those squares.

[00:26:28]So, fours now have to appear in those squares there. Which means that that can't be a four.

[00:26:37]Okay.

[00:26:43]Uh 459239.

[00:26:46]Okay. How we doing here? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

[00:26:50]Okay, so we're actually done there.

[00:26:54]All right.

[00:27:12]Now all of the candidates are in. We might be able to see something else.

[00:27:58]Okay, we've got pointing fives here now.

[00:28:00]So, that can't be a five. That must be the five.

[00:28:05]And this is the four down here. And that's the five there. And that's the four there. So, we can get rid of lots of digit fours and probably finish the game. That's a one now. Get rid of the ones there. That's a one there. That's a one there. That's the eight there. Four goes here.

[00:28:26]No fours there. Four in that square.

[00:28:31]Four in that square. Let's do a bit of tidying up, shall we?

[00:29:23]Okay, let's get rid of some candidate sevens because there are a multitude of them and we don't need them because we actually finished digit seven. This must be a four. We have a one in that row already. There's our five. There's our four.

[00:29:40]There's the nine. There's the one.

[00:29:45]1 5 7 8 are done. Everything else is going to be done in just a second.

[00:30:16]Okay, that's our hard level puzzle today. I found it quite tough to get in there. Maybe you spotted stuff uh without pencil marks as often happens uh to the players who watch this channel.

[00:30:28]So, well done you if you did that.

[00:30:30]Thanks for joining me today. Take care.

[00:30:33]Bye-bye.