Sensei Royale: The Sudoku Coach in Sudoku Royale

Sensei Royale is the coach built into Sudoku Royale. It reads the games you play, works out which technique is costing you the most time, and gives you one assignment to fix it. After a Practice, Daily, or Journey puzzle, it can also walk you back through your game and stop at the moments that stood out. It runs on fixed rules applied to your own move timings, so everything it says comes from something you actually did on the board.

How Sensei decides what you should work on

Every time you fill a cell, the app knows which techniques could have filled a cell at that moment and which was the easiest. When you pause for a long time while an easy move was sitting on the board, that pause is time lost to the technique you did not spot.

Sensei adds these up over the last 30 days. It only counts the part of each pause beyond 8 seconds, and caps any single pause at a minute, so putting your phone down for a coffee does not count as a weakness. The technique with the most seconds lost is the one it picks.

There is one rule on top of that. Until you are solid on the three foundations (Full House, Naked Single, and Hidden Single), Sensei only picks among those three. Pairs and X-Wings can wait until scanning is fast.

The three kinds of assignment

Sensei gives you one assignment at a time and does not change it while you are working on it. It will be one of these:

• Learn it. You have not shown you know the technique yet. "Watch the lesson, then hit N correct reps. Speed doesn't count yet."
• Spot them faster. You can use the technique, but you often miss it when it is there. The task is a set number of reps in a drill, at any speed.
• Get it automatic. You find the technique, just slowly. You get a time target set from your own typical find time, and the task is a run in a row under that time.

Every assignment has a "Why this?" section that shows the evidence, such as how many times the technique was the fastest move on your board recently and you did not play it. Sensei can also show you a position from one of your own games where you missed it, then reveal the move.

The reps themselves happen in the Dojo's drills. See how the Dojo drills work.

Rewards

Finishing an assignment pays shuriken into your total for the weekly Belt League, up to two assignments a week. An assignment you leave alone for 14 days expires, and Sensei takes a fresh look at your games.

Review your game

After a Practice, Daily, or Journey puzzle, the result screen can show a "Review your game" card. Tap it and Sensei replays your game from the starting grid and stops at a few moments, for example:

• "Your fastest stretch."
• "This was the hardest part. You got through it."
• "Correct, and there was a quicker way."
• "That was a sharp find."

Where there is enough data, a stop compares you with other players on the same kind of move, with real counts: "You found it in 6s. Most players take 16s." The review closes with a summary of the techniques you used and can offer a short drill: spot the easy cells on the same board.

Who Sensei is for

Sensei is most useful once you can finish easy puzzles and want to know why medium or hard ones take so long. It is easy to assume the problem is an advanced pattern. Often it is something plainer, like hidden singles in columns you scan less carefully than rows. Sensei tells you which one it is, with the numbers.

If you prefer to choose for yourself, you can ignore it. The Dojo, Practice, and the Daily Challenge work the same either way. For self-guided study, start with our list of sudoku techniques or how to solve sudoku faster.