Sudoku Made and maintained by Brian Hamilton and Karan Hamilton.
Brian builds the playable puzzle tools, while Karan helps test clarity, difficulty feel, and the player experience.
Playable puzzles and controls are tested in the browser for rule accuracy, usability, and a clear solving experience. See how we make and test puzzles, our editorial standards, or report a problem.
What is Cinco de Mayo sudoku?
Cinco de Mayo Sudoku swaps the digits of classic sudoku for nine fiesta pictures: a trumpet, a taco, a chili pepper, a guitar, a cactus, an avocado, corn, a star and a party popper. The fiesta has one firm rule: no picture twice in any row, column or box. Sizes, views and levels are common to all 21 of our picture games, so they have a page of their own, Themed Sudoku.
Five of the nine work in our other games too. The 🎸 guitar and the 🎺 trumpet play in Music Sudoku, the 🌽 corn does harvest duty in Fall Sudoku and Thanksgiving Sudoku, the ⭐ star turns up for Christmas, New Year’s, Space and the 4th of July, and the 🎉 party popper rings in the New Year. The taco, the chili pepper, the cactus and the avocado have no other job; not even Food Sudoku deals a taco.
What the day actually is
Worth settling before the first picture goes down: Cinco de Mayo marks the Battle of Puebla, on 5 May 1862, when a smaller, poorly equipped Mexican army defeated an invading French one. It is not Mexico’s Independence Day, which is 16 September. In Mexico it is not a national day off, and the big commemorations are in Puebla itself; in the United States it has grown into a celebration of Mexican-American culture, and that is the party most people picture. Now you can win the argument at the table, and the puzzle afterwards.
Which board should a child start on?
The 4×4. It deals only the first four pictures, the trumpet, the taco, the chili pepper and the guitar, and no two of them are remotely alike: a horn, a shell, a pepper and a guitar. A child who can name them can play. For teaching the rule, see Sudoku for Kids; for the same 4×4 in digits, 4x4 Sudoku. A rule for taco night: whoever finishes a 4×4 first builds the first taco.
The green arrivals
The 6×6 adds two pictures at once, the 🌵 cactus and the 🥑 avocado, and they are the set’s two green ones. We expected them to be the pair that swaps in a solver’s peripheral vision, so we looked.
On a phone-width Windows screen, 6×6 or 9×9, light theme or dark, the two were easy to tell apart every time. The cactus stands up with two arms raised; the avocado is a round half with a brown stone. Your phone may draw both differently. If they do catch someone out, switch to Both: the cactus is 5 and the avocado 6.
What the greens do bring is the first board where a square can hold either one, and the example below is one of those. 6x6 Sudoku is the same size in plain numbers. The corn, the star and the party popper wait for the full 9×9.
How do you tell where the cactus goes?
This 6×6 Medium board is a real one from the game, shown as it was dealt, with the pencil marks Auto Notes would give each empty square of row 1. Look at R1C2: its own row, column and box leave it three choices, the trumpet, the cactus or the avocado, both greens included, so the square on its own settles nothing. Turn the question round and ask where row 1’s cactus can go.
That is a hidden single: the square has room for three pictures, but the cactus has room in only one square of the row. On the Themed Sudoku page the same move is drawn in a box. Here it has to be the row, because column 2 and the top-left box each still have two places for the cactus. With it in, R1C1 and R1C6 share the trumpet and the avocado between them, and the rest of the board falls to singles. Like every board the game deals, it has exactly one answer; we checked this one with a counter of our own. For the moves that come after singles, start with our sudoku strategies for beginners.