Samurai Sudoku

Medium samurai sudoku

Medium puzzles drop to 120–159 givens. You can still solve some grids partly on their own, but you'll hit walls where the only way forward is through a shared box. This is where samurai sudoku starts distinguishing itself from five separate 9×9 puzzles.

The strategy shift at medium is learning to bounce between grids. When you get stuck in one corner, check the center grid. If you can fill a cell in the center's shared box, it often frees up something in your stuck corner. Build the habit of checking shared boxes after every few placements.

Pencil marks become useful at this level. The auto-candidates feature handles cross-grid constraints for you, so candidates in shared cells already reflect both parent grids. Use them to spot hidden singles in the shared boxes.

Expect 20 to 35 minutes per puzzle. When you can solve these without using hints, try hard.