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 Food Sudoku?
Food Sudoku serves classic sudoku with lunch on the board: an apple, a pizza, a burger, a strawberry, a carrot, a donut, cheese, sushi and a salad. Each food stands for a number, and a finished grid has every food once in each row, column and box. It is the same recipe as our number sudoku, one answer to every board, and the kitchen rules (views, levels, Hint, Notes) are written up once on Themed Sudoku.
The foods join in order as the board grows: 4×4 deals the apple, pizza, burger and strawberry, 6×6 adds the carrot and the donut, and the cheese, sushi and salad wait for 9×9.
| Picture | Number | First on | In the lunchbox as |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🍎 Apple | 1 | 4×4 | Fruit |
| 🍕 Pizza | 2 | 4×4 | Fun food |
| 🍔 Burger | 3 | 4×4 | Fun food |
| 🍓 Strawberry | 4 | 4×4 | Fruit |
| 🥕 Carrot | 5 | 6×6 | Vegetable |
| 🍩 Donut | 6 | 6×6 | Fun food |
| 🧀 Cheese | 7 | 9×9 | For range |
| 🍣 Sushi | 8 | 9×9 | For range |
| 🥗 Salad | 9 | 9×9 | Vegetable |
Names and numbers as the key under the board gives them. The last column is our own sorting, not the game’s.
Is the Food Sudoku menu balanced?
We picked the nine the way you pack a lunchbox with someone watching: two fruits, two vegetables, three fun foods to get children to the table, and cheese and sushi for range. By “balanced” we mean a mix of kinds, not equal amounts, and on the full 9×9 the mix holds.
The small boards are less virtuous, because the game deals the foods in order. A 4×4 is two fruits and two fast foods, with no vegetable at all. The 6×6, where the game opens, brings in the carrot and the donut together. The salad waits for 9×9, so a child on the small boards never has to place it, and no player of any age at our table has ever been excited to. It stays in the set.
Every food goes once in each row, so a finished 4×4 holds four of each picture, a 6×6 six and a 9×9 nine. However the menu was picked, the salad gets exactly as many squares as the donut.
Are the Food Sudoku pictures easy to read on a phone?
On the small boards, yes. Captured at phone width on Windows, light or dark, every 4×4 and 6×6 picture is plainly itself: the apple round, the strawberry pointed and seeded.
On 9×9, where a square is 34 pixels across, two pairs come closer. The apple and the strawberry become small red shapes with green tops. The pizza and the cheese, which Unicode names a slice of pizza and a cheese wedge, are both drawn by Windows as yellow triangles; the pizza has red dots, the cheese holes. That pair only meets on 9×9, as does the sushi, the one food a young child may not have a word for. Your phone draws its own emoji, so its pizza may not be quite the one we saw.
If a pair trips you up, switch to Both, which badges every picture with its number: the apple is 1 and the strawberry 4, the pizza 2 and the cheese 7.
Stuck on a 6×6? Look beside the last picture you placed
The game digs every Easy board so that two moves finish it. The pair below shows them working together on a real 6×6 Easy deal from this game: a hidden single in column 3, where Donuts elsewhere rule out two of the three empty squares, then the naked single it unlocks.
That is the habit worth teaching: after every picture you place, check the empty squares in its row, column and box, because their choices just got shorter. Put through a second solver, the board has one answer, and singles alone take care of all fourteen empty squares.
On the board as dealt, R1C1 and R1C3 can each hold only the Carrot or the Donut. Their shared row and box can’t tell them apart, so the answer has to come from a line they don’t share: column 3, with one place for the Donut. Two squares stuck on the same two pictures are a naked pair, and on a 9×9 Expert board the pair itself can be the step you need.
Food sudoku for kids: which board first?
Food Sudoku is our waiting board: the restaurant table before the food arrives, the last stretch of a car journey, the classroom slot before lunch. A 4×4 or 6×6 fits those gaps, and a first-timer needs no rule beyond “no food twice in a row, column or box.” A four-year-old and a grandparent both know a pizza on sight, which is why we start new players here.
The game opens on 6×6, so for a first go press 4x4, where only the apple, pizza, burger and strawberry play. When the pictures stop being the point, 4x4 Sudoku and 6x6 Sudoku deal the same small grids in digits, and Sudoku for Kids is there for teaching the rules. On 9×9 Hard and Expert, keep pencil marks; Auto Notes adds every one at once.
Fair warning: a 9×9 is a long stare at pizza, burgers and donuts. Solving one before dinner is a bold choice.
Other sudoku games with food pictures
Seven of these nine foods are in no other game here. The apple also turns up in Thanksgiving Sudoku, beside a pumpkin pie, corn and bread, and in Fall Sudoku; the carrot is in Easter Sudoku. Cinco de Mayo Sudoku puts a taco, a chili pepper, an avocado and corn among its nine pictures.