Mini Sudoku

💡 Mini Sudoku Strategy

• The smaller grid forgives scanning. With 2×3 boxes there are only six candidates per cell, so pure elimination will carry you through most puzzles without pencil marks at all.
• Start where two givens share a box. In a 6×6 the boxes are short and wide, so two givens in one box rule out a lot of the row immediately.
• Finish a row before moving on. Completing one line hands you six confirmed eliminations across six different boxes at once — much higher leverage than in a 9×9.
• Treat it as a warm-up. If you are learning the technique, mini grids let you practise cross-hatching a dozen times in the span of one full-size puzzle.

🧠 What Mini Sudoku Builds

Mini Sudoku teaches the same constraint logic as the full grid but shortens the feedback loop to two or three minutes, which is what makes it a good on-ramp. Beginners get to feel the "only one digit fits here" moment repeatedly instead of once or twice per sitting, and players returning after a break use it to re-learn the scanning habit before stepping back up to 9×9.