Here’s what’s behind the ratings

When we split Master into five tiers, we thought we were making life easier for a fairly small group of players. Young, Adept, Veteran, Fiendish, and Supreme would give our most experienced solvers a way to choose their challenge, instead of taking whatever the old Master pool handed them.

The new tiers have been far more popular than we expected. We knew TheSudoku had dedicated players. We hadn’t realized how many of you were ready to spend quality time with a grid that refuses to give anything away.

Apparently, “this looks extremely difficult” is a recommendation around here.

With so many people exploring the new levels, this feels like a good moment to explain something a difficulty label alone can’t tell you: why two puzzles in the same tier can feel completely different.

Even the same numerical rating doesn’t promise the same kind of solve.

What the rating actually measures

Our Master tiers use the Sudoku Explainer rating, or SE:

• Young: SE 4.0–4.9
• Adept: SE 5.0–5.9
• Veteran: SE 6.0–6.9
• Fiendish: SE 7.0–7.9
• Supreme: SE 8.0–8.9

The key to reading those numbers is that SE rates a puzzle by its hardest step along the solver’s logical solution path. It doesn’t add up every difficult move to produce a total workload score. It doesn’t predict your finishing time, either. The Sudoku Explainer FAQ explains this distinction.

Imagine two grids. In one, an advanced technique unlocks the puzzle, and the remaining numbers fall into place fairly smoothly. In the other, you need moves at a similar level again and again: one breakthrough, a little progress, another obstacle.

One demanding move versus ten demanding moves can make for very different evenings. Yet if their hardest steps have the same rating, the puzzles can receive the same SE score.

That’s why a tier is useful for choosing the technical challenge you want, but less useful for deciding whether you have time for a quick game before dinner.

The move you understand can still be the move you miss

There’s another difference that becomes especially noticeable at Master level: understanding an explanation and finding the move yourself are separate skills.

Someone points out a pattern, and the logic makes perfect sense. Of course that candidate can be eliminated. Of course the next cell must be a seven.

Finding that pattern in a crowded grid, without knowing where to look, is another matter.

This is where much of the satisfaction of advanced Sudoku lives. You might know the relevant technique perfectly well and still spend a long time looking past its particular arrangement. Then you see it, make one small elimination, and wonder how something so modest managed to hide for so long.

If a puzzle takes longer than another with the same rating, that doesn’t automatically mean you’ve played worse. You may simply have met a pattern you haven’t learned to recognize as readily.

A higher rating can occasionally feel easier

You may even finish a higher-rated puzzle faster than a lower-rated one.

Perhaps the harder grid happens to suit the way you look for patterns. Perhaps its crucial step stands out to you, while the other puzzle hides a more familiar move in an awkward place. Or perhaps you find a different logical route from the one the rating solver followed.

The rating gives us a consistent reference point. Your experience brings something more personal: the techniques you’ve practiced, the arrangements you recognize, and what you happen to notice today.

So enjoy the quick Supreme if one comes your way. And give yourself some patience when a Young puzzle makes you work.

The names aren’t a verdict on the person solving them.

How to get more from the Master tiers

If you’re using the new levels to improve, try staying with one tier for a while. Give yourself a chance to experience its variety: the grid with one stubborn bottleneck, the one that demands repeated breakthroughs, and the one that unexpectedly suits you.

After a difficult solve, ask yourself: where did I stop knowing what to look for?

That’s often more useful than the final time. If you understood the move once you found it, recognition may be what needs practice. If you couldn’t explain why it worked, spend a little time with the logic before moving on.

And after any major elimination, take a fresh look for simple moves. It’s easy to become so absorbed in advanced reasoning that you overlook the single you’ve just created.

There’s no obligation to keep climbing, either. Finding a tier you enjoy returning to is a perfectly good outcome. Some days you want to stretch yourself. Other days you want a challenge you know how to handle.

A pleasant surprise for us

The response to the five Master tiers has made us reconsider how we thought about our audience. We expected a small corner for advanced solvers. Far more of you wanted a seat there than we’d imagined.

We can’t tell from popularity alone how many players arrived with years of experience and how many are discovering advanced Sudoku now. We’d like to think there’s room for both: people who finally have a suitably demanding puzzle to choose, and people finding out how far they can go.

To everyone playing the new tiers: thank you. You gave us a very welcome surprise.

And if today’s puzzle is taking much longer than yesterday’s, despite having the same rating, remember: the number tells you about the hardest step. You still have to find it.