A typical player takes about 10 minutes to solve an easy or medium sudoku, 15 minutes for a hard one and just over 20 minutes for an expert puzzle. Those are median times from 2,017 completed practice puzzles in the Sudoku Royale app, recorded between May and September 2026. The Daily Challenge, with a median of 55 empty cells, comes in at 9.8 minutes across 2,081 completed solves. Beginners often need twice as long, and the fastest players finish in a third of the time.
Median solve time by difficulty
| Level | Median | Middle half of solves | Fastest 10% under | Empty cells (median) | Solves | Players |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 9.8 min | 7.4 to 13.5 min | 5.1 min | 44 | 681 | 91 |
| Medium | 11.4 min | 6.8 to 18.7 min | 5.0 min | 51 | 611 | 82 |
| Hard | 15.5 min | 8.9 to 24.8 min | 6.4 min | 56 | 311 | 37 |
| Expert | 21.0 min | 13.1 to 29.6 min | 8.7 min | 56 | 224 | 22 |
| Master | 21.5 min | 12.5 to 29.4 min | 8.9 min | 56 | 143 | 10 |
| Extreme | 21.9 min | 14.3 to 31.6 min | 12.3 min | 56 | 47 | 6 |
| Daily Challenge | 9.8 min | 10% under 5.0, 90% under 24.9 min | 5.0 min | 55 | 2,081 | 140 |
"Middle half" is the range from the 25th to the 75th percentile. Times come from the in-app timer on finished puzzles. Medians are used because a few solves run for hours when a puzzle is left open.
What the numbers show
- Clue count sets the floor. Easy puzzles have 44 empty cells, harder levels 56. Across levels, players spent 13 seconds per empty cell on easy and medium puzzles, 17 on hard and 22 to 23 on expert and above.
- Technique sets the ceiling. The jump from medium to hard is where puzzles start to need more than singles. You spend the extra time looking for patterns, not filling cells.
- Master and extreme look barely harder than expert. They are, but only confident players try them. The 10 players on master and 6 on extreme are a stronger group than the 22 on expert, which pulls their medians down. Treat those two rows as the times of experienced solvers.
- Almost everyone makes mistakes. Only 11 to 18% of practice solves at any level had zero wrong entries, and the median solve had 2 to 3. Daily Challenge solves were cleaner: 29% had no mistakes.
What makes hard puzzles take longer: data from our grader
Every puzzle in the app is solved by a grader before anyone plays it. The grader works like a careful human: it always uses the simplest technique that makes progress, and it records which techniques the puzzle needed. We ran the numbers across the 457,048 active graded puzzles in the library, grouped by the grader bands each practice level draws from.
| Level band | Puzzles | Median clues | Need more than singles | Need pointing or claiming | Need pairs or triples | Need X-Wing, XY-Wing or colouring |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 164,377 | 38 | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Medium | 148,279 | 25 | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Hard | 144,316 | 25 | 29.4% | 29.4% | 0% | 0% |
| Expert | 50,434 | 25 | 99.2% | 96.9% | 49.2% | 13.5% |
| Master | 12,155 | 25 | 100% | 99.3% | 91.6% | 66.1% |
Bands overlap at their edges, so a puzzle can count toward two levels. Across the whole library, 77.8% of puzzles can be solved with naked and hidden singles alone. The hardest technique any puzzle needed was spread like this: pointing 8.6%, naked pair 3.6%, claiming 3.0%, simple colouring 2.9%, hidden pair 1.9%, XY-Wing 1.8%, and fish patterns (X-Wing, swordfish, jellyfish) under 0.1% combined. Another 42,750 generated puzzles were rejected because they needed techniques beyond the grader's set, which runs from singles up to simple colouring. Those never reach players.
Put the two tables together and the pattern is clear. Medium puzzles take longer than easy ones only because they have more empty cells. Hard adds pointing pairs, which explains a few extra minutes. Expert is where naked pairs and wings arrive, and where the median time jumps past 20 minutes.
How to get faster
Speed comes from spotting patterns sooner. The biggest single gain for most players is scanning for hidden singles box by box before writing any notes, then keeping pencil marks tidy once you do. We cover the rest in how to solve sudoku faster. If you want to compare with the best in the world, see the sudoku world records: a reported 54.44 seconds for a classic grid.
About this data
Source: Sudoku Royale production database, read-only queries run on 24 September 2026. Solve times cover completed Practice puzzles from 5 May to 24 September 2026 and Daily Challenge solves from 5 January to 24 September 2026. We excluded accounts belonging to the team and testers, tutorial puzzles with fewer than 40 empty cells, and solves faster than 1.5 seconds per empty cell, which are not physically possible to enter by hand and come from a timer issue on some early easy puzzles. All figures are aggregates; no individual player data is shown. Sample sizes for master and extreme are small, so read them as indicative. Technique figures come from the app's grader run over every active puzzle in the library on the same date.
You are welcome to cite these numbers with a link to this page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to solve a sudoku?
For typical players in the Sudoku Royale app, the median is about 10 minutes for easy and medium puzzles, 15.5 minutes for hard and 21 minutes for expert (2,017 practice solves, May to September 2026).
Is 20 minutes good for a sudoku?
For an expert-level puzzle, 20 minutes is right around the median. For an easy puzzle it is slower than about three quarters of solves; the middle half of easy solves take 7.4 to 13.5 minutes.
How long should a hard sudoku take?
The median hard puzzle in our data took 15.5 minutes, with the middle half of solves between 8.9 and 24.8 minutes. Hard puzzles usually need pointing pairs or box-line reduction on top of singles.
What is a good time for a daily sudoku?
Across 2,081 completed Sudoku Royale Daily Challenges, the median was 9.8 minutes. Under 5 minutes puts you in the fastest 10%.
Why do harder sudokus take so much longer?
Harder puzzles have more empty cells and need techniques beyond singles. In our library, 97% of expert-band puzzles need pointing or claiming and about half need a pair or triple, which means more time spent searching for patterns.