Today's NYT Sudoku Answers
Three fresh Sudoku grids drop every day at midnight ET. All three solutions for August 23, 2026 are below, Easy through Hard. Givens stay visible; only your digits hide until you tap.
Hints, one at a time
Sudoku for August 23, 2026 is live across all three difficulties. Every row, column, and 3×3 box needs the digits 1–9 exactly once, and the hints below point at where today's pressure sits without spoiling any cell.
Each full solution keeps its filled-in digits blurred inside the blue box until you press the button, so scroll freely.
Easy grid first, Hard grid last. Stop when a digit starts cascading.
Easy: 38 givens, 43 to solve
Puzzle #151519. Bold digits were printed in the paper; the accent-colored ones complete the grid.
Easy solution
Spoiler below · tap to reveal38 givens printed in bold; the lighter digits are the ones you fill in.
38 clues given. Tap any blurred digit to reveal just that cell, or press the button for the whole grid.
Medium: 25 givens, 56 to solve
Puzzle #151520. Bold digits were printed in the paper; the accent-colored ones complete the grid.
Medium solution
Spoiler below · tap to reveal25 givens printed in bold; the lighter digits are the ones you fill in.
25 clues given. Tap any blurred digit to reveal just that cell, or press the button for the whole grid.
Hard: 24 givens, 57 to solve
Puzzle #151521. Bold digits were printed in the paper; the accent-colored ones complete the grid.
Hard solution
Spoiler below · tap to reveal24 givens printed in bold; the lighter digits are the ones you fill in.
24 clues given. Tap any blurred digit to reveal just that cell, or press the button for the whole grid.
Sudoku strategy that actually helps
Habits that carry over from grid to grid.
Before any advanced technique, sweep for cells where only one digit fits. Most Easy and Medium grids fall to cross-hatching alone.
A row or box with seven filled cells is nearly solved: the last cell takes whatever's missing, and each completion ripples outward.
If a candidate can only sit in one row within a 3×3 box, eliminate it from that row outside the box. These silent erasures unlock hard grids.
On Hard, write small candidates everywhere before committing to anything. A full candidate grid makes naked pairs and triples jump out.
When two cells in a unit hold exactly the same pair of candidates, those digits belong to them, so erase both from every other cell in that row, column, or box. It cracks most Medium grids.
Pick the cell with the fewest candidates and test one. If it leads to a contradiction, undo and try the other. One careful guess on a near-bifurcation beats an hour of scanning.
How to play NYT Sudoku
The rules in full, for anyone arriving without them.
Sudoku is a number placement puzzle on a nine by nine grid split into nine boxes. No arithmetic is involved at any point: the entire puzzle is deduction from the digits already printed.
- 1 Fill every row, column, and box with 1 to 9
Each digit appears exactly once in each of the nine rows, the nine columns, and the nine three by three boxes.
- 2 Scan one digit at a time
Pick a digit that already appears often and find the boxes where only one cell can still take it. This alone solves most Easy grids.
- 3 Pencil in candidates when scanning stalls
Write the possible digits into each empty cell. Patterns like a naked pair, two cells in a unit holding the same two candidates, then eliminate those digits everywhere else in that unit.
- 4 Complete the grid
A valid Sudoku has exactly one solution, so if two answers seem possible you have made an error earlier.
The New York Times
Three grids daily: Easy, Medium, Hard
No limit
Midnight in your local timezone
Never guess on Easy or Medium. Every grid at those levels is solvable by pure elimination, so a guess usually means you skipped a scan rather than that the puzzle got hard.
Sudoku, answered
Can a Sudoku have more than one solution?
Not a valid one. Every published grid has exactly one solution reachable by logic alone, which is a useful debugging tool: if you reach a point where two different digits both seem to work, you have made a mistake further back rather than found a fork.
What is NYT Sudoku?
Sudoku is the classic number-placement logic puzzle: fill the 9×9 grid so every row, column, and 3×3 box contains the digits 1–9 exactly once. The New York Times publishes three new grids daily: Easy, Medium, and Hard.
When does a new Sudoku come out?
The grids reset daily along with the other NYT games. All three grids turn over together, so Easy, Medium and Hard are always from the same day.
Is there only one solution?
Yes. Each daily grid is constructed to have exactly one valid completion, which is why the solved boards shown here match what you'll find in the game.
Do the three difficulties share a grid?
No. Easy, Medium, and Hard are separate puzzles with their own puzzle IDs, though they're published together each day.
Today's hints for every game
Same spoiler-safe format, for each daily puzzle we cover.