Program to Check (or Solve) Sudoku Puzzles

Summary

Areas of Science

Computer Science
Video & Computer Games

Difficulty

Method

Engineering Design Process

Time Required

Average (6-10 days)

Material Availability

Readily available

Cost

Very Low (under $20)

Safety

No issues

Credits

Ben Finio, PhD, Science Buddies

Science Buddies is committed to creating content authored by scientists and educators. Learn more about our process and how we use AI.

Image Credit: Tim Stellmach / Public Domain

Abstract

Sudoku is an extremely popular puzzle game. You start with a 9x9 grid of squares, which contains three smaller 3x3 subgrids. Some of the squares are filled in with numbers 1 through 9. Your goal is to fill in the remaining blank squares such that each column, each row, and each 3x3 subgrid contains the numbers 1-9. No number can appear more than once in any column, row, or subgrid.

For a given starting puzzle, can you write a program to check if a Sudoku solution is valid using a programming language of your choice? Check out these resources from the Raspberry Pi Foundation to learn how to program in languages like Scratch, JavaScript, and Python. You will need to learn how to handle arrays in your programming language to check that a number does not appear more than once in a column, row, or subgrid. 

For a basic project, you can enter the Sudoku solution as an array directly in your code. For a more advanced project, you can design a user interface that displays the initial puzzle as a grid of text boxes, lets the user type numbers into the blank text boxes, stores the numbers in an array, and then checks if the solution is valid. 

There are other possibilities for an even more advanced project. Can you look into various existing algorithms to solve Sudoku puzzles? Can you write your own program to solve them? What about a program to generate Sudoku puzzles? 

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