Sun Sudoku: Where to Play The Sun’s Daily Sudoku Puzzles

Sun sudoku is the 9×9 number-puzzle offering from The Sun, Britain's bestselling daily newspaper. Like the paper's famous crosswords, its sudoku puzzles appear as part of The Sun's daily puzzles lineup — in the print edition's puzzle pages, through the paper's website puzzles section, and in The Sun's published puzzle book collections. If you enjoy newspaper sudokus with a broad, mainstream audience in mind, here is where to find them and what to expect.

What Is Sun Sudoku?

The Sun has published puzzles for decades as a core part of the paper — its Two-Speed crossword, with a choice of cryptic or "Coffee Time" quick clues for the same grid, is one of the most recognisable daily crosswords in Britain. Sudoku joined the lineup as the puzzle swept the UK in the mid-2000s, and The Sun's sudoku follows the classic format: a standard 9×9 grid where each row, column, and 3×3 box must contain the digits 1 to 9 exactly once.

As a mass-market tabloid puzzle, Sun sudoku is aimed at casual solvers rather than specialists. Expect approachable difficulty levels pitched at a general readership — the kind of puzzle you can tackle over breakfast or on a commute — rather than the fiendish constructions found in dedicated puzzle publications.

Where to Play Sun Sudoku

In the print newspaper

The most traditional way: The Sun's print edition carries puzzle pages daily, and sudoku appears among the regular lineup alongside the crosswords. Buy the paper and you will find the day's puzzle ready to solve with a pen — the classic newspaper experience.

On The Sun's website

The Sun runs a puzzles and games section on its website (thesun.co.uk) where readers can play the paper's puzzles digitally, including sudoku. Online play typically adds conveniences the paper cannot: pencil-mark/note tools, error checking, hints, and timers. If you prefer solving on a phone or laptop, this is the natural home of Sun sudoku.

In The Sun's puzzle books

The Sun publishes official puzzle book collections through Collins (HarperCollins) — the long-running "Sun Puzzle Books" series. While the headline titles are crossword collections (the Quick Crossword and Two-Speed Crossword books), the series covers the paper's wider puzzle output, and sudoku collections appear under The Sun's puzzle branding for solvers who want a stockpile of puzzles in print.

What Difficulty Is Sun Sudoku?

Newspaper sudokus from mass-market tabloids are generally pitched at easy to medium difficulty. They are designed to be solvable with basic techniques — scanning, crosshatching, and naked/hidden singles — rather than advanced patterns like X-Wing or Swordfish, which are reserved for the harder end of specialist puzzle magazines. That makes Sun sudoku an excellent training ground if you are working through our guide to how to play sudoku for beginners.

The beginner-friendly difficulty is deliberate: a tabloid puzzle page serves millions of casual solvers who want a satisfying 10–20 minute solve over breakfast, not a 45-minute logic battle. If the daily puzzle ever feels too easy, that is your cue to try a harder source or learn the next tier of techniques, such as the patterns in our hard sudoku strategies guide. Many solvers use The Sun's daily logic puzzle as their warm-up before tackling a tougher broadsheet grid later in the day.

Tips for Solving Newspaper Sudokus

• Start with the givens-rich areas. Tabloid puzzles usually give you plenty of starting numbers — scan for nearly-complete rows, columns, and boxes first.
• Use one digit at a time. Pick the digit that appears most in the givens and sweep it across the grid (crosshatching). On easier puzzles this alone can place a third of the grid.
• Write small, not big. Until a digit is certain, keep it as a pencil mark. Newspaper puzzles punish ink-first solving.
• Check all three houses. Before committing to a digit, verify its row, column, and 3×3 box. Most newspaper-sudoku errors come from checking only two.
• Do not guess. A proper newspaper sudoku always has a logical path. If you are stuck, re-scan slowly — the missing placement is usually hiding in a box you glanced over.

Sun Sudoku vs Other Newspaper Sudokus

The UK's papers each have their own puzzle character. Broadsheet sudokus (The Times, Guardian, Telegraph) tend to run harder, with dedicated difficult slots at the weekend, while tabloid offerings like The Sun's sit at the friendlier end of the spectrum. None of this is a criticism — a well-constructed easy puzzle is harder to make than it looks, and the approachable difficulty is exactly why millions of casual solvers stick with their paper's puzzle page.

If you enjoy the newspaper format, you may also like our guides to other UK newspaper sudokus — each paper's puzzles have their own flavour, difficulty curve, and solving community.

Building a Daily Sun Sudoku Habit

The Sun's sudoku works best as a small daily ritual rather than an occasional diversion. A few habits make it stick.

• Solve at the same time each day. Morning coffee, the commute, or a lunch break — anchoring the puzzle to an existing routine is what turns "sometimes" into "daily".
• Keep a streak going. Mark each completed day on a calendar. After a few weeks the streak itself becomes motivation, and breaking it feels like a real loss.
• Alternate with the crossword. The Sun's puzzle page pairs its sudoku with the famous Two-Speed crossword. Doing both exercises different mental muscles — logic for the sudoku, wordplay for the crossword.
• Graduate when it gets easy. If you are finishing in under ten minutes without breaking a sweat, add a second daily puzzle at a harder level rather than abandoning the one you enjoy. The Sun's puzzle books offer a natural step up.