Mini Sudoku answers archive

October 2026 (19)

September 2026 (27)

Weekday givens in HintSheet's archive

Across the 37 Mini Sudoku puzzles from 3 September to 10 October 2026 on HintSheet, the number of pre-filled cells ranged from 10 to 16 out of 36, averaging 11.8. Ten givens was the most common count (16 boards), followed by 12 (11 boards), 14 (5 boards), 16 (4 boards) and 11 (1 board).

The weekday pattern is unusually clean. Monday boards started with the most help and the weekend with the least, and the decline was steady through the week.

All four 16-given boards were Mondays, and no Monday board had fewer than 14. At the other end, Saturday and Sunday boards never had more than 12. If you want an easy board for a beginner, the Monday entries are the reliable choice.

In practical terms, a Monday grid in this window left about 20 of the 36 cells to fill, while a weekend grid left about 26. Six extra empty cells on a board this small is a large change: it is the difference between rows that start with about two and a half digits on average and rows that start with fewer than two.

Symmetry, missing digits and empty lines

Thirty of the 37 starting layouts were symmetric under a half-turn: rotate the grid 180 degrees and the given cells land on given cells. That is a sign the boards are hand-arranged rather than scattered, which fits our guide's note that LinkedIn produces the puzzle with Nikoli. It also gives you a small check when you copy the live board onto paper: if your copy isn't symmetric, look again.

Sixteen of the 37 boards left one digit out of the givens entirely, so at the start you had no example of it anywhere on the grid. Those boards reward hidden singles over naked ones: you find the missing digit by asking where in a row or box it could still go, not by eliminating everything else from a cell.

Twenty-one boards had at least one row or column with no given digit, and six had a whole 2×3 box with none. An empty box is not a problem in itself, but it does mean the box has to be filled entirely from what its rows and columns allow.

One more count, reported as we found it: across all 437 given cells, the digit 1 appeared 98 times and the digit 6 only 45 times, with 2, 3, 4 and 5 in between (82, 78, 82 and 52). We don't draw a rule from it, but if you habitually scan for the digit with the most copies on the board, expect it to be a low one.

Givens were not always spread evenly, either. Ten boards had a row holding four or more given digits, which leaves at most two cells in that row and makes it one of the fastest places to start. The most lopsided was #420 on Monday 5 October, whose top row came with five of its six digits already filled in.

Climbing a weekly difficulty ladder

Because the givens fall so steadily through the week, the daily puzzle itself works as a difficulty ladder, and the counts above tell you which rung each day sits on. Give each day one technique to focus on, and check the result against the finished grid here afterwards.

The hardest starting layouts in the window are worth knowing about. Four boards had two rows and two columns with no given digit at all: #405 on 20 September, #409 on 24 September, #410 on 25 September and #411 on 26 September, three of them with only ten givens. If a live board opens like that, expect the row-box interaction to carry most of the solve.

Use the finished grids here to check, not to start. Solve the live board first, then open the day's entry and compare row by row; the first row that differs points to the step where the solve went off track.

• Rung 1 — Monday, 14 to 16 givens. Naked singles alone finish most of these. Use them to build scanning speed across rows, columns and boxes.
• Rung 2 — Tuesday, 12 to 14 givens. Start forcing yourself to use hidden singles: pick a digit and find its only home in a box.
• Rung 3 — midweek boards with 10 or 12 givens. Here the row-box interaction starts to matter: a digit confined to one row inside a box clears that row in the neighbouring box.
• Rung 4 — a day with a digit missing from the givens. Sixteen of the 37 boards in the window were like that, so expect one every two or three days. When you spot it, solve the missing digit first, by hidden singles only.
• Rung 5 — a weekend board with an empty box. Fill everything around the box first and let it complete itself last.

Navigating the months and numbers

Mini Sudoku resets at midnight Pacific time, and the new grid appears at the top of this list at that moment. Puzzle numbers rise by one per day. The archive runs from #388 on 3 September 2026 to #425 on 10 October 2026; the only missing day is 5 September (#390), a grid we don't hold.

If you play from Asia, Australia or anywhere well ahead of Pacific time, you meet each puzzle on the calendar day after the one we file it under. Searching by number avoids the mismatch. The numbers are printed beside each date on the month pages, which also show the full solution for every day of that month on one screen.

The month pages hold the finished grid for every day of the month on one screen, which makes them the quickest way to check a run of days at once, for instance a whole week you played on paper and want to mark in one sitting.

If a day you are looking for is not where you expect it, check the month heading first: entries are filed under the puzzle's own date in Pacific time, so a puzzle played early on the first day of a month in Asia may sit under the previous month here.

Frequently asked questions