You must have heard people say, “This Sudoku is unsolvable.” But, that’s not true, and we have an explanation as to why this is just a myth.
Talking of unsolvable Sudoku, these are the situations that make it so:
- Failing to spot the way forward
- Incorrect allocation of numbers
- Multiple solutions
- Incorrectly generated puzzle
Every expertly designed puzzle offers only one unique solution. The ones that have multiple solutions or none at all are not Sudoku in real sense. Puzzles have solutions – that’s what differentiates them from games. And, not being able to solve the puzzle personally doesn’t make it unsolvable. If you aren’t able to, someone else will!
People also refer to the difficulty level when they assume the puzzle to be unsolvable. And even after applying all the known techniques of solving a Sudoku, it remains unsolved. Well, that’s again just an extremely complex Sudoku. These may seem evil at first but certainly, have a valid solution – not solvable by commonly known strategies but some advanced ones you might be unaware of.
Sudoku is a logic-based number-placement game created with the intent of having only one unique solution without guesswork but uniqueness strategies. If you can crack Sudoku by guessing, it’s against the nature of the puzzle.
Today, most Sudoku free puzzles are automatically generated, so it’s safe to say that computers do not guess. Despite having no human intervention, creators make sure the grid is solvable by human-friendly techniques, so it’s not a tedious adventure. Therefore, puzzles with more than one or no solutions are very rare.
Moreover, ensuring solvability is fundamental to the process of creating Sudoku. The creator either starts with a solution employing a deductive approach or begins with a blank grid with an additive method. However, there are many ambiguous generators or publishers with impish impulses who create puzzles without a unique solution invalidating the true nature of Sudoku puzzles.
An actual Sudoku creator will want you to win and have fun at it. The levels might be challenging, but those are all well-crafted, keeping in mind that you have a good time. If you’d like to try your hands on a genuine puzzle, try the Easybrain Sudoku free puzzles mobile app available on both Play Store and App Store. With an incredible amount of high-quality free challenges that are appropriately coded to offer unique solutions, you are guaranteed not to be bored.
So the most straightforward answer to the unsolvable Sudoku myth is that there’s no Sudoku that cannot be solved. If it cannot be solved, it cannot be created either. If you still find any, it surely violates the rules and is not a real Sudoku puzzle but something similar. Also, if you get the puzzle from a reliable source and are a committed Sudoku expert, you’ll know the puzzle is solvable with pure constructive logic.
So that’s about it! We hope the next time you encounter an unsolvable puzzle; you’ll know what’s behind it!