Sudoku solution – The Guardian 20 July 2026 Easy level sudoku

[00:00:03][music] [music] >> Hello fellow Sudokans. Welcome to Zen in the arts of the guardian Sudoku puzzle.

[00:00:14]It's Monday the 20th of July 2026.

[00:00:17]I hope you are feeling well keeping in fine fettle this morning.

[00:00:22]Uh we've got a whole week ahead of us.

[00:00:25]And uh this is this is the easy level game so you if you're new to the channel as you may well be because this is a beginner level and I shall explain the rules. Welcome and if you're wondering what a Sudokan is, well it's my silly word that I came up with uh and hopefully one day will appear in the dictionary as a either a person who plays Sudoku or comes from planet Sudoku whichever you prefer.

[00:00:49]And uh I'm here with my cat Joni uh who might start to purr in a minute or might start to jump down and start aggressively attacking the microphone.

[00:00:58]Jump up and start aggressively attacking the microphone cuz he does dislike Sudoku unfortunately.

[00:01:06]It's not just a pure Sudoku channel.

[00:01:08]I also chat for a little while about anything that's on my mind.

[00:01:12]And uh the disparity in pay is currently on my mind about the difference between rich and poor because it the disparity continues.

[00:01:23]Um and uh according to the an article in the Guardian um median pay for FTSE 100 chief executives uh hit 5 over 5 million pounds. That's per annum of course.

[00:01:40]Uh it's just outrageous and uh the analysis is that company bosses are now paid 130 times the salary of the average full-time UK worker. Okay, the the cat's had enough.

[00:01:55]130 times um and uh most of this is you know ridiculous when they when they just simply wine and dine and make some rather dubious decisions.

[00:02:08]Yeah, okay, the cat does agree on that.

[00:02:14]Cat's trying to make up his mind whether or not he can tolerate the dog who or not. Come on then.

[00:02:20]Back he come. Okay.

[00:02:22]I'm going to be starting playing the game in a minute. That's going to really annoy you.

[00:02:27]Right, so how do we play this game of Sudoku then?

[00:02:31]That's right, Johnny. You know there are nine squares in each of the rows across.

[00:02:37]There are nine squares in each of the columns up and down.

[00:02:41]And there are nine of these squares in each of these small sections which I refer to as blocks, rather confusingly because I also use block as a verb which in a different sense, but we'll get to that in a minute.

[00:02:56]You can see some numbers. You can see some blank squares. Guess what the idea of the game is? Yes, you got it even without me telling you. It's to fill in the empty squares with numbers. Now, because there are only nine squares in each row, column, and block, the smallest the lowest number is one and the highest number is nine and each number must not be repeated. That's the object of the game. You can't repeat the digits.

[00:03:21]So, when we look over here and we see that we don't have digit five, all we've got is digit four and two. You may be thinking, well, how on earth can we know where a digit five goes?

[00:03:32]What we do is we look at the we examine the fives that are not in this block.

[00:03:36]And what we see is there is a five in this row already and that means that five cannot reappear in this row.

[00:03:44]So, immediately those two squares are disallowed.

[00:03:47]We have a five in this row as well.

[00:03:49]We have three squares which are now taken out of action.

[00:03:53]And we have five in this column, which means that this square up here can't be five. Remember, columns, rows, and blocks can have one digit only. I mean, one of one instance of that digit only.

[00:04:06]So, we're left with one empty square.

[00:04:08]And so, what we know is that the five must go there because it can't go anywhere else. And that's the key thing to remember in this game.

[00:04:14]If it can't go anywhere else, it must go there.

[00:04:18]We're going to continue in this block.

[00:04:20]We're going to look for digit eight.

[00:04:23]So, when we look at the eights outside the block, we see we have an eight here, which stops those three squares, like the five did a moment ago.

[00:04:31]And we've got an eight, which blocks across here. I say blocks means stopping those squares from becoming eight.

[00:04:38]And that means that we must have an eight in that square there.

[00:04:43]Now, we're going to look at this top line here. We've got three empty squares. One of the missing digits is one. Now, one already takes up all of the squares in this block. So, we can't have another one in this block here. So, that means that the only empty square in this row is this square here. One must appear in that square there.

[00:05:03]Uh missing digits here are two and seven. Now, we've got two in this column already.

[00:05:09]So, we know this square can't be a two.

[00:05:12]So, we can place our two there. And we can put our seven in this square here.

[00:05:20]Our one blocks across here like this, and one blocks up here like this, giving me a one in the only available square there, which is that there.

[00:05:30]Hope you're following this. If any of this seems a bit too quick, um please remember you can just rewind the video, watch it again, as any section of it that you want, any uh the whole of it again if you want to.

[00:05:42]And you'll do me a favor when you do that, because you'll be increasing my number of YouTube views, and giving me maybe about 0.01 of a cent.

[00:05:52]Which I appreciate.

[00:05:59]Oh, cat's had enough Sudoku now.

[00:06:02]He's had his breakfast already, so he's better than me. We've got two blocking this square here from this row.

[00:06:09]We've got two blocking this square here from this column.

[00:06:12]So, in this section which only has three digits missing, we know that the two is there and now the missing digits are What have we got? One, two. We don't have three and we don't have four. So, we know that these two squares are three and four.

[00:06:24]Now, at this time at this point in time, we can't say which is which.

[00:06:28]But, we do know either this is three and this is four or this is three and this is four.

[00:06:39]So, you know, let your eyes wander around the grid.

[00:06:42]Or um if you prefer, click on digits if you're using a computer. Seven blocks up here like this. Seven blocks up there like that. That gives us seven in that square there.

[00:07:04]Looking to see if there's anything interesting I can show you.

[00:07:08]Mhm.

[00:07:15]Don't see anything interesting just yet.

[00:07:20]Ah, yes, I do.

[00:07:22]Uh in this row here, we don't have digit eight.

[00:07:26]But, we've got eight blocking from down here. Eight blocking from up here and eight blocking from up here like that.

[00:07:32]So, in this row, there's one empty square where an eight can go.

[00:07:36]And it goes there.

[00:07:54]>> Um You know, as I say, look at look at blocks that have or columns or rows that have not many digits missing.

[00:08:03]Uh for example, if we look here, what have we got missing in those three squares?

[00:08:07]Uh we don't have four, we don't have six, we don't have nine.

[00:08:12]Uh that doesn't help us. We can see that six blocks up here, so we've got a possibility of six in those squares.

[00:08:19]Nine blocks up here, so we get a possibility of nine in those squares.

[00:08:25]And the four, we don't have any news here on digit four, so we have to leave that.

[00:08:30]So, that's not much use, is it? Let's see about this column, shall we? We're missing three, four, and nine can't come back No, we're not, sorry.

[00:08:40]Three, four, uh six, I should say. Okay, so we've got six blocking this square here and six blocking this square here.

[00:08:53]All right, remember? Only once in a block, row, or column, so that means that that must be a six.

[00:09:00]Uh and now we know that this is going to be four and nine in those squares there.

[00:09:08]So, now we can get this because we know that four is in one of these two squares. That means that this square can't be four, but we still need four in this block, remember?

[00:09:17]So, that's our four and that's our three. And now because we know that this is four and nine, we can get the missing square here because even though we don't know which is which, we can say that there's only one digit left.

[00:09:28]Uh and that is going to be a six.

[00:09:30]This is four and nine, we still need a six in this row.

[00:09:44]>> Is there anything else we can get? We can get six blocking across here, six blocking up here. When I say blocking, I mean stopping it from becoming a six.

[00:09:53]And then we've got six blocking across here and across there, which will give us six in that square there.

[00:10:01]And on this side, six blocking down and down here and across there.

[00:10:05]That's our six. And six blocking across, across, and down, and down.

[00:10:11]That one.

[00:10:13]So, that's the final digit six. Final? Yes, because every row, every column, and every block already has a six. So, there are no more to find.

[00:10:22]There are always nine iterations of each digit in a game of Sudoku, classic Sudoku like we're playing.

[00:10:34]Uh we have eight blocking this square, eight blocking this square.

[00:10:38]Don't have eight in this row yet.

[00:10:40]We put it there.

[00:10:45]We have four blocking this square, and we don't have four in this row yet, so it goes there. And the last digit to complete this row is a three.

[00:10:53]We also have three blocking this square, that gives me three there.

[00:10:57]And the last number to go there is seven.

[00:11:00]I can hear a very noisy bird outside tweeting away.

[00:11:05]Seven there. You wouldn't believe that here in Bangkok, it's a concrete jungle, and I have no idea where the birds are [laughter] coming from.

[00:11:15]Seven in that square there. Seven blocking across here, and seven in that square. So, that's also like digit six finished. There are no more digit sevens to find.

[00:11:29]Now, we have digit one blocking this square, but in this column, we don't have one yet, so we'll put our one there.

[00:11:34]And to finish this column, it's going to be a four. And we also can see that four is missing from this block here.

[00:11:41]And then four blocks across here, or we can just see which number is missing here. Same thing, we'll get the four there. Four blocks down here, down there, and across there.

[00:11:51]Gives me four in that square. Like I say, once again, if any of this is too quick, please rewind, watch again.

[00:11:58]Uh we only have two digits missing down here. What are they? One and three. We've got a one blocking this square, so we know that's our one.

[00:12:08]And that's our three to go there. We also have three blocking up here, so now we know that's a three, which we didn't have before.

[00:12:15]Oh, I think we did. Oh, maybe we did, actually. I just Maybe I didn't see it.

[00:12:18]And we've got nine to go there.

[00:12:21]If you become a regular viewer for this channel, you'll find I often miss things.

[00:12:26]And you might be wondering, "How on earth do you miss things?" And it's just I have no idea, but I do.

[00:12:31]And uh I will I've noticed that when I watch other people's Sudoku games, when I used to, I don't do it anymore, but I used to watch other people's Sudoku channels, and I always think, "How did you miss that? How did you miss that?"

[00:12:41]But it's not the same when you're making videos.

[00:12:44]Missing digit in this column is four.

[00:12:46]We also have four blocking up here.

[00:12:47]That's the four.

[00:12:49]That's the nine. And we only have one number missing down here.

[00:12:53]One, two, three we don't have, so that's a three.

[00:12:59]And only one number missing in this block or this column, whichever's easiest for you to look at.

[00:13:04]It's going to be a nine.

[00:13:08]Right, what's left?

[00:13:10]Digit one we still need.

[00:13:12]We've got one blocking across here, one blocking down there, that gives us a one in that square. And the last digit to come down here is uh No, not that.

[00:13:26]Is it a two? I think it is. It's a two.

[00:13:29]Okay.

[00:13:31]And can we get any more twos?

[00:13:34]No, we still need five though. We got five blocking across here. That gives us five in that square and now we can say that this must be a nine.

[00:13:44]And we still need nine in this row here.

[00:13:46]It's the last digit in.

[00:13:49]And we need something down here which is an eight, the last digit to complete this row. If you think I'm finding them pretty quickly, not really. You'll be able to do much faster than this once you get started. That's a two.

[00:14:00]Two blocks down here. There's a two. I better go on top. Oh, the cat's just jumped up on me.

[00:14:05]Come to say goodbye. Okay. So as we finish our Sudoku puzzle, cat's going to say goodbye. Go on, say goodbye.

[00:14:13]Come on then.

[00:14:15]That's it. Purr at the microphone.

[00:14:17]Make people feel ready for the week ahead. Thanks for joining me this Monday and I'll see you another time.

[00:14:24]Hopefully I'll see you later today for some more difficult Sudoku puzzles. Take care.

[00:14:28]Bye-bye.