UK Puzzle Association

This is the discussion thread for the 2026 UK Sudoku Championship.

Duration: 2 hours
Dates: Friday 22nd - Monday 25th May 2026
Contest Page: https://www.ukpuzzles.org/contests.php?contestid=75
Instruction Booklet: [to add]

Please post any questions about the competition here.

The puzzles are currently going through testing for difficulty level and calibration of points, I hope to get the instruction booklet out within the next week or so.

The instruction booklet has now been uploaded to the contest page.

https://www.ukpuzzles.org/contests.php?contestid=75

Not sure if this is the best place, but how do we get started on the example Search Nearest Nine? I got the 9 right in the centre, which I thought was very elegant, but I can’t get anything else.

pinkagape wrote: ↑Sun 17 May, 2026 10:52 am Not sure if this is the best place, but how do we get started on the example Search Nearest Nine? I got the 9 right in the centre, which I thought was very elegant, but I can’t get anything else.

The break-in involves the diagonal arrows in boxes 2,4,6 and 8 and how they interact with box 5.

To be specific, r1c5 and r5c1 have to be different, so one of them needs to be a 1.

I find most Sudoku variants to be new to me.

Chapeau, Calum. That’s really elegant. Took me a while to break that down even after you told me where to look. Really enjoyed that.

Contest starts in about 1 hour, good luck everyone!

Is it too late to join? If not for some reason I can’t registered…

Hi Glosna, as you are able to post on the forum you are registered so you should be able to take part.

Results and solutions now posted, thanks everyone for taking part! Hope you enjoyed the puzzles

Many thanks to Liane and Tom for their help in the competition setup.

Great puzzles. Thank you Calum.

Congrats Freddie, and great to see a leaderboard featuring David and Sam as well. Having been under the weather I'm very pleased to have a clean submission, even if not quite a clean solve. I suppose if you're going to make mistakes it's better to know about them!