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 dog sudoku?
Dog Sudoku is a classic sudoku in which nine dog pictures do the digits’ job: a dog face, a dog, a poodle, a guide dog, a service dog, paw prints, a bone, a tennis racket and ball, and a dog house. Every row, column and box gets each picture once, and every picture stands for a number, so the board can switch to plain digits whenever you like.
Search for dog sudoku and you will also find a treat puzzle for dogs and games where you place one dog in each row, column and coloured region. This is the number puzzle, for people, and its views, sizes and levels are the ones every picture game here uses, all 21 of them, walked through on Themed Sudoku.
Which dog is which? The five-dog problem
Most of our picture sets mix things that look nothing alike. This one doesn’t: five of the nine pictures are dogs, and since a smaller board deals the first pictures in the set, the dogs crowd the small boards most. The 4×4 is four dogs and nothing else; the 6×6, the board the game opens on, is five dogs and a set of paw prints.
| Board | Pictures in play | Dogs |
|---|---|---|
| 4×4 | 🐶 1 Dog Face, 🐕 2 Dog, 🐩 3 Poodle, 🦮 4 Guide Dog | 4 of 4 |
| 6×6 | those four, plus 🐕🦺 5 Service Dog and 🐾 6 Paw Prints | 5 of 6 |
| 9×9 | those six, plus 🦴 7 Bone, 🎾 8 Tennis and 🏠 9 Dog House | 5 of 9 |
The names and numbers are the key’s own. In Numbers view the number replaces the picture; in Both it rides along as a badge.
Five dogs are not five look-alikes, though, at least not as Windows draws them, at any size and in either theme. The poodle is the only grey dog, the dog face is just a face, and the service dog sits in a red vest on a blue lead. The pair to watch is the dog and the guide dog: the same tan dog, standing, facing left. The plain dog curls its tail over its back; the guide dog wears a harness with a tall handle, which on a 9×9 phone board is a thin grey line. They meet on every size, the 4×4 included.
The dark theme adds a problem of its own: the paw prints are dark purple, and on a dark square they are the faintest picture in the set. If either catches you out, switch the display to Both: the dog is 2, the guide dog 4 and the paw prints 6.
Before a first game with a young child, find the two in the key and put a finger on each: the 🐕 Dog’s tail curls up, the 🦮 Guide Dog has a handle on its back. Ten seconds there saves an argument on the board later.
How do you solve a 6×6 dog sudoku on Hard?
One square at a time, and here the five-dog problem is the whole puzzle. Below is a real 6×6 Hard board from this game; 14 pictures came with the deal. The ringed square is a naked single: its row, column and box hold five different pictures between them, so the sixth is its answer.
Everything rests on the tan dog at R3C3. It wears no harness, so it is the plain Dog, and the ringed square takes the Guide Dog. Put a Dog there and it turns grey and counts as a mistake. We re-counted it ourselves, outside the game: exactly one answer, and nothing beyond singles needed to reach it. On a 6×6, Hard means fewer pictures to start from, not a harder kind of move.
Why are a guide dog and a service dog in the set?
They are two of the only five dogs emoji has. Unicode, the standard behind emoji, has a dog face, a dog, a poodle, a guide dog and a service dog, the last two added in 2019, and this set uses all five. The other four tiles are what comes with a dog: paw prints, a bone, a 🎾 for games of fetch and somewhere to sleep. Windows draws that one as a pink racket with the ball at its tip, which is why the key calls it Tennis.
The two working dogs also give a child something to ask about. The guide dog’s harness has a handle because the person it guides holds on to it, and the service dog’s vest says it is at work.
The 🐕🦺 Service Dog is really two emoji, the 🐕 dog and a 🦺 safety vest, joined by an invisible character that asks your device to draw one picture. Chrome on Windows does, in the key, on the board and on the keypad. A device whose emoji predate 2019 may not draw the guide dog or the service dog properly; in Both, the numbers still say which is 4 and which is 5. There is no dog-house emoji at all: the Dog House is 🏠, a plain house.
How do you play dog sudoku with a young child?
Let the youngest player name the tiles after dogs they actually know. “The poodle is Auntie Sue’s dog” sticks far better than “picture number three”, and asking where Biscuit can still go in a box is a hidden single in a dog costume. The logic doesn’t change; the sense of ownership does.
The 4×4 is the place to learn the tail from the handle, on squares big enough to see both, before the 6×6 brings in the service dog and the paw prints. The same small grids come in digits as 4x4 Sudoku and 6x6 Sudoku, and Sudoku for Kids covers teaching the rules themselves.
Is there a dog sudoku for any time of year?
This is it. Unlike the holiday themes, this board has no month attached: it is the one we point people to for a picture sudoku in the middle of March. Animal Sudoku’s one dog, among eight other animals, is the same 🐶 face as the Dog Face here. Sports Sudoku deals the same 🎾 as its Tennis picture, from 6×6 up rather than only on the 9×9. For pictures with no theme at all, try Emoji Sudoku or Symbol Sudoku.