Daily Sudoku - 25 May 2026

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:01]Hello and welcome to the Daily Gas for May 25th, 2026 called eight story skyscraper by Clover.

[00:00:11]Normal 8 by 8 Sudoku rules apply.

[00:00:14]Clues outside of the grid indicate the total number of digits that can be seen in that row or column when looking into the grid from the direction where the clue appears with larger digits blocking all smaller digits behind them from view.

[00:00:29]So, what does that mean? Well, this is a skyscraper Sudoku. It's been a little while since we've seen it, but I still have an image saved of how this variant works. So, as I expand it out for us to view here, in the grid, the digits outside of the grid indicate the number of skyscrapers that can be seen from the direction of the clues. So, for example, if we look in the direction of the five from the one, right? The one at the top points down. You can only see the five skyscraper, right? Imagining five as a five-tall building because it hides the four, three, one, and two.

[00:01:12]Whereas, if you look from the direction of the four just below, it sees two, three, four, and five because those are in increasing order, but the two building hides the one building, and therefore you only see four buildings.

[00:01:25]And of course, on the left and right, you see the three and two respectively, where the buildings block views of other buildings.

[00:01:36]And that's pretty much how that variant works. Those are the rules. Let's just jump right into it.

[00:01:47]You know, there's a reason that I keep that around. It's just so helpful to always refer back to. So, now, what can we do? Well, either we want to look for really small values, like two for example. Two on this side with three it would have to be two or one and then immediately after it you would need an eight. And actually eight, there's a number of eights in the grid. So either eight goes here, here, here. If eight went here, there is no way that you can only see two stripes skyscrapers and the same is true over here. So that means eight just simply has to go here.

[00:02:24]Symmetrically we have the same exact thing. Eight will go here. Uh we can place eight here and here. Is that all of our eights? That is in fact all of our eights in the grid. So now we have to be careful about how things are built because all the eights have been placed.

[00:02:38]So we need to work around them. Like four uh one of these will be hidden. So there will be one building in here that's shorter than the rest. Otherwise, just by default all of these will be hidden by the eight.

[00:02:52]Six and yeah, look at that. Six in both of these directions cuz it is at least symmetrical in in in this way.

[00:02:59]4 6 5 5 is where we break, but um here eight is a six-digit and eight is a six-digit. So actually here, three starting with three, we know this must be 3 4 5 6 7 and then this has to be 1 2. Only order for that is 1 2 like that.

[00:03:18]With the one though, we have some flexibility of how this builds up.

[00:03:29]So maybe the consideration is like just trying to figure out what digits go where. Like there are certain limits.

[00:03:34]Like here, this is 5 6 or 7, right? 5 6 or 7.

[00:03:38]Obviously this can't be seven, but even if this was six, this wouldn't work. Oh no, it would. 3 6 and then Oh no, it wouldn't work because you can't have Okay, so seven is the problem here. So it could have worked with 3 6 and then if seven could go in one of these two cells. But, because specifically 7 cannot go in one of those two cells, that actually says that this can't be 6, so it has to be 5. And that will of course give us 5 here.

[00:04:08]Do get pair on 5. It doesn't really help there, so I won't won't worry about it too much. 2, 3, this will be 6 or 7. This is a 6 7 pair.

[00:04:19]Neither of those see um any uh my brain.

[00:04:30]See any skyscrapers. There we go. 2, 3, 6, 7. So, 6 7, but the other thing to consider is with 6 here, this has a limit as well.

[00:04:39]This could not be 6 or 7. This has to be 2 or 3.

[00:04:44]Question is this 3 too large? Cuz 3, you can't have 5, so 3 Let's minimize. 4, 6, 7. I guess that actually works.

[00:04:56]And then 2 would allow us to have 3 there, but 4, and then we have 5 or 7 are both valid options.

[00:05:08]Hmm. [snorts] Okay, well, I'm getting distracted. Where else can we look like here? 8.

[00:05:13]8 is the sixth digit. Um 7 certainly can't go here, so 7 will have to go in one of these two cells.

[00:05:20]Which actually forms a set, so 7 will go in one of these two cells. I don't know if it's really that helpful, though.

[00:05:26]Um the other thing to consider is one then. One, you don't have space to hide the one. So, actually this is just 3 4 5, isn't it? It's 3 4 5 with 1 7 here.

[00:05:41]>> [sighs] >> Which means something, I'm sure.

[00:05:53]one well either six or seven will block the four.

[00:06:02]So, as long as this is less than this digit, then we're fine.

[00:06:07]I guess essentially this this can't be seven. It could be six or anything else allowed by Sudoku.

[00:06:16]I guess just six and two.

[00:06:20]Hmm.

[00:06:23]Five. So, five is already counted for here.

[00:06:27]So, one two this could be two one Oh, well, this is five. Hello. So, this has to be four three two. I wasn't even paying attention to that.

[00:06:42]That's fully restricted there.

[00:06:45]The threes get us three.

[00:06:47]This is six and seven.

[00:06:56]Just I was realizing that I could probably resolve that. So, let's do it.

[00:07:05]617 What are we missing? 672 Hmm.

[00:07:29]I guess this has to be 567. I wasn't even thinking about that here with the four.

[00:07:34]It's fully restricted there. 34 I think this has to be 56. Only way to to that there.

[00:07:43]Then this will be four. So, let's place that.

[00:07:46]Then as for the 1 2, we can easily resolve that in both places here.

[00:07:51]So, let's do it. This is one. Six gets us six and seven.

[00:07:56]Six gets us six and seven. This is going to be two. Has to be.

[00:08:03]Then 1 4 4 here.

[00:08:09]1 7 1 here.

[00:08:13]7 6 Then we have six and five across.

[00:08:21]We're still missing seven. This is seven here and six five and we are done in 6 minutes and 39 seconds with eight-story skyscraper by Clover.

[00:08:34]Got a little caught up in some of the relationships there, but yeah, like realizing once we had this in place, which was just given to us from the start, how this has to be placed, which then not realizing that it then also forced that. Like there's a lot of forcing chains in this one. Like the second you get three here, you realize it has to be 8 7 6. That sort of thing. If you spotted that, then you would have been done within probably like 2 minutes, but I just didn't see all the different connections there.

[00:09:10]And in the end, that's what held me up cuz like here it's the same thing.

[00:09:14]Everything was very nicely connected in this one. I guess as we should come to expect from Clover.

[00:09:22]That that doesn't mean that we aren't always impressed.

[00:09:26]So, with that, hopefully you enjoyed and thank you for watching.