NYT Hard Sudoku Walkthrough | May 9, 2026

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Hello, let's do the New York Times hard Sudoku for May 9th, 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.

[00:00:10]All right, starting with this two and three.

[00:00:13]Is there anything? Um you'd think so.

[00:00:21]We just have these two twos. We have these two threes. Okay, so there's just nothing with two and three.

[00:00:28]All right, moving on to the one, four, and five. So this one looks down, this one looks in, putting a one in one of these two.

[00:00:37]We have the fours looking down.

[00:00:40]Putting a four in one of these two and then the fives look down with this five looking in, putting a five in one of these two.

[00:00:47]One, four, five.

[00:00:51]Um hm >> [clears throat] >> I'm looking to see if there's any geometry here, but I don't see it.

[00:00:59]Okay, so nothing else to do with that.

[00:01:03]Six and seven.

[00:01:04]We have two sixes looking in, puts a six in one of these two.

[00:01:09]And then the sevens look down, this seven looks in, that's not a seven, so seven's placed here.

[00:01:15]These two sevens look in, this seven looks down, putting a seven in one of these two. We almost have a hidden quad here.

[00:01:22]Um five, seven.

[00:01:25]The fours.

[00:01:27]All right, well, we'll see if that goes anywhere. I don't see anything immediately.

[00:01:31]Um I don't think the one or the nine have a crossing over here. They do not.

[00:01:36]I'm just going to move on to the next band. We have two fives looking in here, fives in one of these two.

[00:01:42]That's it for five. We have four five seven Two sevens look back, this seven looks in, sevens one of these two.

[00:01:58]Eights look up, placing the eight in this box.

[00:02:02]All right, this is a filled box column, so we want to look at these digits.

[00:02:05]Not eights, not fives, so the nine looks up, putting a nine in one of these two.

[00:02:10]That's going to point down with this nine, putting a nine in one of these three. Oop, not this one cuz that nine.

[00:02:16]In fact, this column's just down to four digits. We need a 2 3 6 9.

[00:02:21]So, this can't be three, so this is 2 6 9.

[00:02:24]It's not nine either. It's just 2 6.

[00:02:28]This is 2 3 6. This is 2 3 9. This is any of them.

[00:02:33]Okay.

[00:02:36]We know that the three and the nine are stuck down here. So, the three is down here, which I haven't marked.

[00:02:45]That's just because of the column. This three sees here, so the column needs to put a three here. So, these can't be three.

[00:02:51]Does that help me in some way?

[00:02:55]Uh three in this box is one of these two.

[00:02:58]1 2 3 6. So, this is 1 2 6. This is 2 3 6.

[00:03:03]Sorry, 2 2 3 6. This is 1 3 6 cuz it can't be two.

[00:03:09]All right. I did the eights. How about the nine?

[00:03:13]Nine's looking here, placing the nine in this box, which then places the five and the six. That gives us the two, the one, leaving a 3 6 pair behind. These can't be two anymore. In fact, this is just a 3 6 9.

[00:03:28]Okay.

[00:03:29]So, what is this one?

[00:03:31]It's not one, actually. Oh, okay. So, the one the one's looking down. I would I just placed that one.

[00:03:38]Puts a one in one of these two. That creates a hidden one four pair.

[00:03:42]Um because in this box, the one goes in one of these two, and the four goes in one of these two, so one of them is one, the other's four, meaning we don't have room, for example, for this to be a seven.

[00:03:52]Because it needs to be a one or a four.

[00:03:53]So, that places the seven and the five and whatever this is, two.

[00:03:58]Very nice. All right. This is a pair up here with the nine. Um one, two Oh, no, sorry, it's 3 6 9. I didn't notice that for some reason.

[00:04:08]Um And yeah, this is going to be a quad with the 3 6. So, one We need a two.

[00:04:19]Um uh what Let me think about what all of them are. 2 3 6 7. 2 3 6 7.

[00:04:25]All right, they all see something. They see 6 7, that see 3, this two.

[00:04:30]Not nine, seven.

[00:04:33]All right.

[00:04:35]I don't think there's anything immediate to do with that, is there?

[00:04:40]Not that I can see. We know the two and the seven are up here.

[00:04:44]But I don't think I need to mark that.

[00:04:47]All right, well, nice for the stack there. I got this one and two. What What's this pair? We need a four and eight.

[00:04:55]It's not resolved, but that means this is a triple for the rest of the row, 1 3 6. Right one's not a three. Oh.

[00:05:02]Sorry, it's not 1 3 6. I mis-scanned. 2 3 6.

[00:05:05]That's not two, that's not three. So, the two in the row can only go here.

[00:05:10]All right. The twos look down. So, two's in one of these two. We have a lot more twos than when we started.

[00:05:17]That's good.

[00:05:18]This is a triple for the row. We need a four, five, and not five, fours 4 8 9.

[00:05:24]Got it right eventually. Ah, can't type it though. 4 8 9. And then this is 1 3 6 7. So, this isn't seven, so it's 1 3 6.

[00:05:33]This is 1 6 7. This isn't any of them.

[00:05:36]All right.

[00:05:38]Um got the two, got the one and the two, got the 5 6 9. So, let's just look at this whole box. We have the one.

[00:05:48]I don't see anything with ones. We have the two.

[00:05:53]Two is in one of these two.

[00:05:56]We have three.

[00:05:58]I'm just looking vertically cuz we already have this band basically taken care of.

[00:06:02]Um anything with three?

[00:06:06]Three is almost limited in this row cuz it can't be here and it can't be here or in these.

[00:06:12]So, there's two places in this row, but two is still not one.

[00:06:16]Uh the five.

[00:06:19]Two fives look up. This five looks in.

[00:06:20]That's nice. Placing this five, these fives look in. This five looks up.

[00:06:24]Putting a five in one of these two.

[00:06:27]Okay. So, any new crossings on this 5 7?

[00:06:31]The four or the two could. The two does.

[00:06:34]Two looks in here like this crossing this 5 7. So, two ends up in one of these two. That's going to point down saying this can't be a two. So, this is the only place for two.

[00:06:45]That gives us the two here.

[00:06:47]Um how are we doing on twos?

[00:06:53]Yeah, so we're just down to this rectangle of twos. That's it.

[00:06:56]Um this whole column needs 1 4 8. This isn't a four, so 1 8.

[00:07:00]This isn't an eight, so 1 4. Hmm.

[00:07:06]All right, did I get through everything?

[00:07:07]I don't think so. I think I placed the five. The six. Two sixes, three sixes.

[00:07:12]The sevens. Yeah.

[00:07:14]And the nine. Okay, the nines do look up. Putting a nine in one of these two.

[00:07:20]Let's um let's see what's this what else Let's look at this column.

[00:07:25]We need a 2 3 4 8.

[00:07:30]All right. Um first thing I'm seeing is this isn't two or eight. So, the eight actually ends up in one of these two.

[00:07:37]And that's going to claim. So, that this column needs an eight, right? This can't be the eight. None of these are the eight. This one's not the eight. So, the column's going to put an eight in one of these two, and those are both in box three. So, this will be the eight for box three because the column's going to place it there.

[00:07:51]Meaning this can't also be an eight in box three. This column doesn't get to do it. And so, that's our one, that's our four, that's our eight. That's our four.

[00:07:58]We get the one and four here.

[00:08:01]All right. Um so, what is this besides two eight?

[00:08:06]It's three four.

[00:08:08]Oh, this isn't four either.

[00:08:10]Okay. So, it's a naked three.

[00:08:12]And then this is two four eight. This can't be two or four, so this is our eight.

[00:08:17]Leaving a two four pair behind. Okay.

[00:08:19]This is a pair as well. We know it involves the nine.

[00:08:23]Three nine, and this three tells us that's nine, that's three. The nine gives us the six.

[00:08:28]Gives us the seven two three and nine.

[00:08:30]That's our four and two, that's three and six nine.

[00:08:33]All right. The six in this box is placed.

[00:08:37]This is one three seven. We don't need the corner marks. Here we don't need the nine. All right, we're we're wrapping up here.

[00:08:43]This pair is one six.

[00:08:47]Oh, no, it's not six. One eight. This eight tells us which way.

[00:08:51]Um this row needs something. It's not eight this time.

[00:08:55]I missed it again. Two. No.

[00:08:58]It's the four. Okay.

[00:09:00]I missed it twice.

[00:09:02]Anyway, uh one two, we need three six nine.

[00:09:07]Not three, not six.

[00:09:11]Okay.

[00:09:13]Maybe up here. What do we need up here?

[00:09:15]One two three, we need four five six here.

[00:09:19]Oh, this can't be the five.

[00:09:21]Oh, no, there's a six in the row. It's not four five six.

[00:09:24]It's four five eight. This can't be five or eight, so this is the four.

[00:09:29]That gives us the nine and the eight and the four. And so, now the this can't be the eight, so that's five and that's eight.

[00:09:35]Uh this pair is one seven Seven looks up. That's one, that's seven.

[00:09:42]Going against the three, the one, and the seven. And these two are six and nine. The nine tells us that's six, that's nine. We get the nine and the six down here.

[00:09:51]We get the three and the six here. We need a one, we need a three, and we need a five. All right.

[00:09:59]Uh, yeah. A pretty quick puzzle today.

[00:10:01]Um, didn't even get to finish my scanning down to here. Not that there was much going on down here, at least at first, but um, yeah, this middle band and then I think this last stack did a lot for us, or was it the middle stack?

[00:10:13]Maybe both.

[00:10:14]And then the first band finished I I don't even remember. All right, a lot of it just kind of toppled.

[00:10:19]Um, I think there was a hidden pair I found that was very useful.

[00:10:24]Anyway, let me know how you did and if you enjoyed this, want to leave a like, subscribe, and a kind comment below.