30 clues lands you in solid medium territory. Most cells give in to hidden singles and crosshatching, with only a handful of subsets needed in the harder examples.
51 empty cells. The 30-clue band is the canonical medium Sudoku - enough open space to feel like a real puzzle, enough structure that you rarely need pencil marks until the last quarter of the grid.
30-clue puzzles are the most popular daily Sudoku format in printed newspapers worldwide. The clue count is high enough for casual solvers but low enough to require real attention - the perfect coffee-break difficulty.
Open with crosshatching - for each digit, scan every box and ask where it can possibly go. Hidden singles will resolve a large fraction of the grid before you ever pick up pencil marks. When scanning stalls, write candidates in the remaining cells and look for naked or hidden pairs. Most 30-clue puzzles need at most one subset elimination before the cascade finishes the puzzle.
For deeper coverage of the techniques you will need, see our guides on Hidden Singles, Pointing Pairs, Naked Pairs, and the full Sudoku strategies hub.
This page is part of our Sudoku by clue count cluster. The fewer clues a puzzle has, the more advanced the techniques required. The proven minimum is 17 clues - see 17-clue Sudoku for the famous case. For the matching difficulty band see Medium Sudoku.
Excellent. 30 clues is the canonical newspaper-Sudoku difficulty - finishable in 10 to 18 minutes for most solvers and challenging enough to keep your scanning skills sharp without burning a full afternoon.
Usually only for the final stretch. The first two-thirds of a 30-clue puzzle typically resolve through scanning alone. Add pencil marks once placements stop coming - usually around the 20-cells-remaining mark.
A 30-clue Sudoku puzzle starts with 30 digits already placed in the grid out of 81 cells, leaving 51 cells for you to fill. Lower clue counts generally mean harder puzzles because you have less starting information.
Most experienced solvers complete a 30-clue puzzle in 10-18 minutes. Beginners may take significantly longer at this clue count, especially if pencil marks are required.
In our classification, 30-clue puzzles are rated medium. The exact difficulty also depends on which solving techniques are required - clue position matters as much as clue count.
Yes. Open any puzzle from this page and use the print function in your browser, or visit our printable collection at /printable-sudoku for printer-optimized layouts of medium puzzles.
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