7-Day Sudoku Practice Routine: Easy to Medium Fast

🎯 What This Routine Is For

Moving from Easy to Medium puzzles is all about shifting your brain from "finding where a number CAN go" to "finding where a number CANNOT go."

This 7-day routine is designed to bridge that mental gap and sharpen your deductive reasoning. Each day focuses on a specific technique, building on the previous day until you have the complete toolkit needed for Medium — and beyond.

Days 1–2

The "House" Sweep

Training your eyes to see the long lines

Cross-Hatching + Row/Column Focus

Most beginners focus exclusively on 3x3 blocks (which is natural — they're visually obvious). This exercise forces you to think about the long rows and columns that span the entire grid.

📋 The Drill: Complete 3 "Easy" puzzles focusing only on the long lines. Find the row or column with the most numbers already filled. Identify the missing numbers. Check the intersecting 3x3 blocks to see if those missing numbers are already present in that column. This forces you to see the "long game" of the grid.

🎯 Goal: By the end of Day 2, you should be automatically scanning rows and columns before looking at blocks.

Days 3–4

Systematic Pencil Marking (Snyder Notation)

The professional tool for breaking through

Pencil Marks + Snyder Notation

Medium puzzles usually cannot be solved without marking candidates. Snyder Notation keeps your grid clean and prevents the overwhelm of too many marks.

📋 The Drill: Only write pencil marks when a number can fit in exactly two cells within a 3x3 block. If you find a third possible spot, don't mark it yet. If one of those two spots gets filled by another number, the other spot automatically becomes that number.

🎯 Goal: A clean grid with only the most certain pencil marks. This helps you spot Naked Pairs instantly — the cornerstone of Medium solving.

Day 5

The "Candidate Elimination" Hunt

Stop looking for answers — start eliminating possibilities

Naked Singles + Elimination

This is the day you stop looking for the answer and start looking for what isn't the answer. This mindset shift is the core difference between Easy and Medium thinking.

📋 The Drill: Pick a blank cell. List every number from 1 to 9. Cross out every number that already appears in its row, its column, and its 3x3 block. What remains are the only candidates for that cell. Do this until you find a Naked Single (only one number left).

🎯 Goal: Find three Naked Singles hidden in the "empty-looking" parts of the grid — the spots beginners skip because they look difficult.

Day 6

Identifying "Pointing Pairs"

Your first true intermediate logic jump

Pointing Pairs — Intermediate Logic

Pointing Pairs is the technique that marks the boundary between beginner and intermediate solving. It requires looking at how a block interacts with its surrounding row or column.

📋 The Drill: Look at a 3x3 block. If a number (say, 5) can only fit in two cells, and both those cells are in the same row, then 5 cannot be anywhere else in that entire row outside of that block. Use this "pointing" logic to erase pencil marks in neighboring blocks and rows.

🎯 Goal: Find and correctly apply one Pointing Pair that reveals a hidden single elsewhere in the grid.

Day 7

The "No-Eraser" Challenge

The ultimate test of confidence and certainty

Certainty + Confidence Building

Today is about certainty. You are only allowed to "ink in" a big number when you are 100% sure of it. Use pencil marks heavily, but don't commit to a final answer until you've triple-checked its row, column, and block.

📋 The Drill: Attempt a Medium puzzle. Use pencil marks freely for candidates. But every time you write a final number in a cell, say out loud (or think clearly): "This is correct because [reason]." If you can't state the reason, don't write it yet.

🎯 Goal: Complete the puzzle without a single error — building the confidence that certainty (not speed) is the foundation of great solving.

💡 Pro-Tip for Consistency: Set a timer when practising. An Easy puzzle should eventually take you under 5 minutes. Once you hit that mark consistently, your brain is "wired" for the patterns and you are ready to move to Medium full-time. Speed is a symptom of mastery — not a prerequisite for it.

🧩 Bonus Technique: The Naked Triple

Once you've mastered Naked Pairs (from Day 3–4), the natural next step is the Naked Triple — the "big sibling" technique that lets you eliminate candidates from an entire house in one powerful move.

A Naked Triple occurs when three cells in the same house contain only the same three candidates — but the cells don't all need to have all three numbers. They just can't have any other numbers.

Example: In a row, imagine three cells with these pencil marks:

Cell A: [1, 5]
Cell B: [5, 9]
Cell C: [1, 9]

Even though none of the cells contain all three numbers, these three cells form a Naked Triple — because between them, the numbers 1, 5, and 9 must be placed there. You can safely eliminate 1, 5, and 9 from every other cell in that row.

The Three "Flavours" of Triples

The Perfect Triple

[1,2,3] / [1,2,3] / [1,2,3] — Rare, but immediately obvious when you see it.

The Overlapping Triple (Most Common)

[1,2] / [2,3] / [1,3] — The most frequent pattern in Medium and Hard puzzles. Each pair shares one number with the others.

The Complex Triple

[1,2,3] / [1,2] / [2,3] — One cell has all three candidates, the others have two each. Harder to spot, but very satisfying when found.

Ready to Level Up Further?

After completing this routine, explore our Cheat Sheet and Advanced Techniques guide for the next challenge.

Get the Cheat Sheet Advanced Techniques

The 7-Day Sudoku Practice Routine