Daily Hard Suko Puzzle for Friday 18th December 2020 (Hard)

How to play

This is an example of a completed Suko grid. Your aim is to insert the numbers 1-9 in to the grid so that each number only appears once, and all the totals are satisfied.

There are two types of totals you can see in this grid,

Quadrant totals: These are the numbers given in the circles inside the grid itself. The quadrant total in the top-left is 14, for example. We can add the 4 cells around this total together, 6+1+2+5, to check that we get 14.

We can do the same thing for the lower-right quadrant total of 25, i.e. 5+8+3+9 to make sure that gives us 25.
Layout totals: There will always be three different colours for the cells in each puzzle. The numbers above the grid tell you what these should add to. From this puzzle, we can see that,
1. The green cells should add to 9 (2+7).
2. The blue cells should add to 20 (8+3+9).
3. The red cells should add to 16 (6+1+4+5).

Suko is a Trademark owned by Jai Kobayaashi Gomer of Kobayaashi Studios. The original design and puzzle format was also created by Jai.

This is an example of an easy Suko starting grid, and we can immediately see that there are a couple of numbers we can insert. The total for the top-left quadrant is 23, and the total for the blue cells is 14. We can also see that the only cell in the top-left quadrant that isn't in the blue area is the center cell, this means this cell must be the difference between both sets of cells, i.e. the center cell is 9.

We can now look at the bottom-left quadrant, which we know must total 27. If we take the green cells, and the middle cells away from this total we get the value of the remaining cell, i.e. 27-14-9 = 4

We have inserted all of the easy numbers in this Suko grid now. The next step is to insert pencil marks for all the cells still left!

Using the layout totals, we have inserted pencil marks for the remaining cells - there are a few Sudoku techniques we can borrow here. The 6 and 8 at the bottom of the grid are a naked pair, so we can remove the 8 and corresponding 2 from the blue cells in this grid.

We can now apply the quadrant totals here to see which combinations are possible. Looking at the bottom right quadrant we can see that the remaining three cells here must total 13 (22-9). For the bottom-center cell we can see that we have the possibilities of 6 and 8. However, if this cell was an 8, this gives a total of 5 (22-9-8) for the remaining two cells. There is no way for us to make 8 with the remaining cells, so the bottom-center cell must be 6 (and the bottom-left cell is the 8).

We can do the same thing by looking at the top-right quadrant. We already have a '9', so the remaining three cells must also total 9 (18-9). If the top-center cell was a 7 the other two cells would need to total 2, and there is no way to achieve that, i.e. the top-center cell must be 3 (and the top-left cell must be a 7).

We have almost solved this Suko puzzle now. Looking again at the top-right quadrant, we can see the two remaining cells must total 6 (18-3-9). With the numbers left, we can only do that using the 1 and the 5. This means the bottom-right cell must be 2 (as it is the only number remaining unused).

From this we can work out the center-right cell is a 5 (using the lower-right quadrant total), which means the top-right cell must be the 1.

The finished grid!

Daily Hard Suko Puzzle

Friday 18th December 2020

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Daily Hard Suko Puzzle

Friday 18th December 2020

Suko leaderboard

How to play

Try our other puzzles!

Sudoku

Logic Puzzles

Card games

2 player games