How to Play Arrow Sudoku

Arrow Sudoku is a variant where arrows are drawn across the grid. Every digit placed along an arrow must sum to the number written inside the circle at the arrow's base. Standard Sudoku rules still apply — every row, column, and 3×3 box must contain the digits 1–9 exactly once.

Each arrow starts at a circle and extends through one or more cells. The digit in the circle is the target sum for all cells the arrow passes through. A single-cell arrow tells you the exact digit in that cell. Longer arrows have multiple possible combinations, which you narrow down using Sudoku constraints.

It depends on your experience. Arrow Sudoku adds an arithmetic layer on top of standard logic. Easy puzzles are comparable in difficulty to medium classic Sudoku. Hard and expert arrow puzzles require simultaneous constraint-tracking that most players find significantly more challenging than any classic Sudoku difficulty.

No — digits can repeat on an arrow only if standard Sudoku rules allow it. Because each row, column, and box must contain 1–9 once, a digit can appear twice on an arrow only if the two cells are in different rows, columns, and boxes. In practice, most arrow cells are highly constrained.

Start with single-cell arrows — the digit in that cell equals the circle value directly. Then look for short arrows with extreme sums. A 2-cell arrow summing to 3 can only be {1,2}; summing to 17 can only be {8,9}. These give you the tightest starting constraints without any guessing.

Easy puzzles take 5–15 minutes. Medium puzzles typically run 15–30 minutes. Hard puzzles average 30–60 minutes, and expert puzzles can take over an hour even for experienced solvers. Solve times improve quickly once you develop intuition for which arrow combinations are possible at a glance.