Is 6 minutes good for Sudoku? An epic guide for gamers
For most mortal gamers, 6 minutes is a totally respectable time to complete a tricky sudoku puzzle! While you won‘t be ranking on the international tournaments leaderboards with that, having the logical reasoning skills to efficiently solve challenging grids in under 10 minutes is awesome. Let me break that down for you…
A brief history of competitive sudoku
While Sudoku originated in 18th century Switzerland, the puzzles first exploded in Japanese newspapers in the 1980s. The first world sudoku championship was held in 1997, but it wasn‘t until the New York Post brought it overseas in 2005 that competitive speed-solving became really intense.
These days, there are national and world sudoku tournaments held yearly where gamers battle it out to complete diabolical grids, aiming for both accuracy and insane speed. The records are held by people like Yuki Mizusawa from Japan who can blaze through a difficult puzzle in under 8 minutes. Yeah, it‘s intense!
But for us normal gamers starting on our sudoku-mastery journey, judging our speed based on the ninja-level players is totally unfair! Let‘s talk reasonable expectations…
What impacts your Sudoku solving time
Many variables affect how quickly you can accurately complete these number grids. These include:
Difficulty level
- Easy – For beginners, can take 5-10 minutes
- Medium – Intermediate players spend 10-15 minutes
- Hard – Challenge enthusiasts grapple for 15-30 minutes
- Evil – Only the brave endure 30+ on these ones!
Your logic skills
- Ability to spot naked singles, locked candidates etc quickly
- Recognize deadly patterns like X-Wings that cut down options
- Sharp scanning to rapidly identify digits with only 1 placement
This just comes with practice. I find playing 5 or 10 puzzles every day helps these become second nature until I suddenly smash through ones that previously stalled me out. Love when that happens!
Concentration and focus
- If your attention slips, you waste time doubling back
- I like epic soundtracks to get in the zone
- Short breaks help clarity more than grinding it out exhausted
Having a Bowl of Lucky CharmsTM
- This is unconfirmed, but I swear it helps me get in the zone 😂
The Ultimate Sudoku Book recommends beginning players should spend no more than 15 minutes on easy grids before it becomes too frustrating. I agree – check your ego and try an easier difficulty if you are constantly stumped. Building confidence is key!
Here is a table summarizing reasonable solving times at each tier:
| Difficulty | Beginner Target | Intermediate Aim | Advanced Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | Under 15 minutes | 5-7 minutes | 3 minutes |
| Medium | 15-20 minutes | 7-12 minutes | 5 minutes |
| Hard | 20-25 minutes | 12-15 minutes | 8 minutes |
| Evil | 25-30 minutes | 15-20 minutes | Under 10 minutes |
| Inhuman | 30-45 minutes | 20-30 minutes | 10-15 minutes |
So based on this…
Is 6 minutes good for Sudoku?
If you are completing tricky hard or evil sudoku puzzles in 6 minutes consistently – huge props, you are advanced level! Techniques like identifying complex chained inferences between candidates is allowing you to eliminate huge chunks of possibilities in one go.
At major competitions like the World Puzzle Championship, the best solvers in the world record average solving times around 8 minutes for very hard grids.
So for us average gamers, 6 minutes already demonstrates we know our stuff! With more training, I think 5 minutes or under on hard sudokus, and 7-10 minutes for evil is a reasonable aim. That said, everyone has different natural affinities – work on improving against your own personal best rather than abstract targets.
Tips to improve your Sudoku speed
Here are my top 5 tips for Incremental training to boost solving speed:
- Start timing your solves to benchmark
- Focus on accuracy first, speed second as fundamentals
- Isolate repeating pattern types (chains, turbot fish etc) in easier grids first before combining techniques
- Take on sudoku variants like killer, mega or hyper sudoku to build general logic skills
- Compete against friends! Shared motivation helps. Loser buys the 🍕
With daily practice and incremental challenges, your solving velocity will gradually improve. Just like grinding for loot in your favorite RPG and suddenly realizing your damage output has doubled – trust the process fellow gamers!
Most importantly though – have fun. If you are getting more frustrated than a Game Over continue screen, walk away and come back refreshed. Mastering sudoku is a marathon, not a sprint!
Now I‘m hungry for both sudoku victory and pepperoni pizza. Let me know your best solving times and favorite puzzles below!
