How to create your own Sudoku puzzle from scratch

Sudoku is a 9x9 box of Japanese puzzle that has been assimilated into some of our daily lifestyle. It provides an exercise for the brain, hence some people have a daily dose of it to keep the brain galvanized and to stay in tip top condition, possibly keeping any mental disease at bay as well.


Just take a look around in any bookshop and you’ll for sure will see Sudoku puzzle books being sold in the fun/puzzle/hobby section. They offer various difficulties and they also come in different multitude of shapes and sizes. To me, they are just a waste of money. What you’re investing in is actually just the aesthetics because you can create your own Sudoku puzzle by yourself, free of charge, without spending a single cent. All you need is paper and pen and pencil.


To create a Sudoku puzzle is as easy as ABC or 123, seriously. One just need to have a basic know-how of Sudoku to do this and the difficulty can be tweaked according to one’s will.


This method doesn’t involve complex algorithms which are used by computers to generate the puzzle.

---

Here’s how to do it:


Step 1:
Start with a basic Sudoku grid.





Step 2:
As can be seen, there are 9 big boxes which contain 9 smaller boxes in them. 


Starting with number 1 (whichever number doesn’t actually matters), fill up each big boxes with the same number, ensuring that none of the Sudoku rules are broken.






Like so. See, all of the 1s have their own ranks and files which don’t intercept.




Step 3:
Repeat Step 2, but with the remaining numbers i.e. 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.


After doing the afore mentioned steps, you should end up with a complete Sudoku puzzle, like the following.





Step 4:
Now we have a completed Sudoku puzzle, we can set the difficulty level by erasing away some numbers from the grid. The more numbers we erase, the more difficult this puzzle will get. Here is the breakdown of the difficulty according to the number of missing numbers:


Easy level: <46 missing numbers
Medium level: ~51 missing numbers
Hard level: ~ 54 missing numbers
Insane level: >56 missing numbers


For example, this puzzle that we created is easy when there are roughly 46 missing numbers:





Tadaa! See, now you have your very own self created, hand-made Sudoku puzzle from scratch. I bet you can even publish your own Sudoku puzzle book now and put it up in the bookstores.


This method that you’re looking at isn’t plagiarized from any sources and it is merely the writer’s way of creating a Sudoku. Any similar method that can be found elsewhere in cyberspace doesn’t relate to this post.


This is my way of creating a Sudoku puzzle from scratch. If anyone has other ways of doing it, feel free to share it here.