Black

White

Still having problems?

Thats okay, no problem. We all start somewhere and its normal to get stuck up on some more difficult techniques. In this section, ill talk a little more about some basic techniques that might even be able help you in the puzzles you are working on now. Ill show you some more tricks for working with pairs and some new tricks on working with triplets. I will only cover classic sudoku techniques but they may help you if you are doing a different variations. some of these might be difficult to follow, feel free to read through this a couple times until you are comfortable with each technique and try them yourself.

Hidden Pair

Hidden Pairs are usually much harder to spot. This is because the pair of symbols are covered up by other false candidates. we can see that in this example, 8 and 9 can only go in the highlighted squares, so we can remove our pencil marks for anything else in those cells and in any box, column, or row that those cells share, you can remove 8 and 9

Sudoku grid showing two cells that have multiple candidate but 2 are unique to these 2 cells
the highlighted cells are the only cells that can have 8 and 9, we can remove 7,3 from both of those cells and 8,9 pencil marked in any cells in the same row, box, or column as both.

Pointing Pairs/Pointing Triples

Pointing pairs/triples are useful techniques, Pointing pairs is when two digits are restricted from a row, column, or box because it see's in its row, column or box 2 other cells that must be those digits.

Sudoku grid showing two cells that have multiple candidate but 2 are unique to these 2 cells
The highlighted cells have four avaliable candidateS. but we can remove two of them (4,7) because they are being pointed at us from our same row

Naked Triple

Naked triples occurs when you have three numbers being the only candidate for the same three cells in a row, column, or box.

Sudoku grid showing three cells that can only holt 1, 7, or 8. this is called a Naked Triple
The Highlighted cells can only hold the numbers 1,7,or 8. we could rules those numbers out of the same row, column, or box.

Hidden Triples

Hidden Triples similarly to Hidden pair, are difficult to spot. This is because a hidden triple is three numbers, that can only go into the same three cells but the cells have other pencil marks in them "Hiding" the triple we are looking for. if you find three digits that can only go into the same three cells you can remove any other pencil mark from those cells.

Sudoku grid showing two cells that have multiple candidate but 2 are unique to these 2 cells
the highlighted cells are the only cells that can have 4, 8 and 9, we can remove 7, 3 and 1 from all of those cells and 4, 8, or 9 pencil marked in any cells in the same row, box, or column as all three of the "hidden" digits.

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