Sudoku Download Samurai Sudoku PDFs
Each PDF holds 100 puzzles of five overlapping 9×9 grids, one to a US Letter page, then 25 pages of solutions: 126 pages, black and white, about 1.9 MB.
Easy Samurai Sudoku
210 of the 369 cells given. Naked and hidden singles finish all 100 puzzles.
Download PDFMedium Samurai Sudoku
165 givens. Singles still finish 95 of 100, but only half the grids can be solved on their own.
Download PDFHard Samurai Sudoku
130 givens. Only one grid in eight solves alone, so the shared boxes do the work.
Download PDFExpert Samurai Sudoku
105 givens, close to the minimum. Three in four go past singles, locked candidates, naked pairs and the X-Wing.
Download PDFWritten by Karan Hamilton. Reviewed by Brian Hamilton.
Karan focuses on printable puzzle usefulness, family and classroom fit, and player clarity. Brian checks the technical setup and puzzle logic.
Printable puzzle packs are checked for usable PDF layout, answer keys, and solvability. See how we make and test puzzles, our editorial standards, or report a problem.
What is in the printable Samurai Sudoku PDFs?
Four files, one per level, each holding 100 samurai puzzles, one to a page. A samurai is five ordinary 9×9 sudoku grids laid out in an X, with the centre grid sharing one 3×3 box with each corner grid, so a puzzle has 369 cells rather than 405. Every file runs to 126 US Letter pages:
- page 1 is a cover with the rules;
- pages 2 to 101 hold Puzzles 1 to 100, so Puzzle n is always on page n + 1;
- pages 102 to 126 hold the solutions, four to a page, in puzzle order.
The pages are black on white, each file is about 1.9 MB, and there is no sign-up. The rules in depth and the strategy are on the Samurai Sudoku game page; this page is about the puzzles on paper.
We made every one of these puzzles. Each was dealt by the generator behind that game page, then proved to have exactly one answer by a separate program before it went into a file. The files at these addresses were replaced in October 2026. The earlier ones held ordinary 9×9 sudoku, not samurai, so if you saved one before then, download it again.
The generator checks its own work, and we did not take its word for it. Before a puzzle went into a PDF, a separate solution counter, which stops the moment it finds a second answer, checked it: all 400 had exactly one, and none had to be dealt again. Then a third solver, from our samurai test tool, solved all 400 once more. It found one answer every time, matching the printed solution in all 369 cells.
How hard are the Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert samurai puzzles?
The levels differ in how many of the 369 cells are printed for you: 210, 165, 130 and 105, exactly, on every puzzle in a file. To see what that means for solving, we ran all 400 printed puzzles through a solver that tries one technique at a time, and asked of each 9×9 grid inside them whether its own givens, with no help from its neighbours, leave only one answer.
| Level | Givens (of 369) | Singles alone finish it | Needs locked candidates, a pair or a triple | Beyond our solver | Grids pinned by their own givens |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 210 | 100% | 0% | 0% | 83% |
| Medium | 165 | 95% | 2% | 3% | 51% |
| Hard | 130 | 71% | 5% | 24% | 12% |
| Expert | 105 | 20% | 6% | 74% | 1% |
All 400 puzzles in the four PDFs, 100 per level, exactly as printed; each PDF is 126 pages. Each puzzle counts under the hardest step it needed, from a solver that knows naked and hidden singles, locked candidates, naked pairs and triples, and the X-Wing. “Beyond our solver” puzzles still have exactly one answer. The last column is the 500 individual 9×9 grids at each level, asked whether their own givens alone leave one answer.
Easy and Medium are singles puzzles. Naked and hidden singles finish every Easy puzzle and 95 of the 100 Medium ones, so what you are taking on is the size, not the logic. What grows from level to level is how much the five grids need each other: 83% of the Easy grids could be finished from their own givens, 12% of the Hard ones and 7 of the 500 Expert ones. From Hard up you cannot complete one corner and move on; progress comes through the shared boxes.
Which samurai sudoku PDF should you print first?
Easy if the five-grid layout is new to you, Medium if ordinary sudoku already feels comfortable. Hard is where the overlaps start to matter. Only one grid in eight can be finished alone, so you have to keep moving between grids, yet 71 of its 100 puzzles still fall to singles once you do.
Leave Expert until Hard feels routine. It sits near the floor: a samurai stripped of every clue it can lose while keeping one answer bottoms out at about 95 givens, and Expert prints 105. Three Expert puzzles in four, and a quarter of the Hard ones, go past everything our solver knows: singles, locked candidates, naked pairs and triples, and the X-Wing. They still have one answer each, but finishing them takes a step beyond that list.
How do you print a samurai sudoku big enough to write in?
Each puzzle fills its page. The grid prints 7.1 inches (18 cm) across, so every cell is about 8.6 mm square: room for a digit and a few small pencil marks. To keep it that size:
- Print at 100%, or “actual size”. The pages are US Letter. On A4, actual size still fits: Letter is 6 mm wider than A4, and the margin on each side of the grid is about 18 mm. “Fit to page” works too, and shrinks the grid by about 3%.
- Print a page range, not the whole file. Puzzle 7 is page 8, and its answer is on page 103. In general, Puzzle n’s solution is on page 101 + n ÷ 4, rounded up.
- Mark the four shared boxes before you start. The PDF draws them with the same lines as every other box and does not shade them. They are the boxes where the centre grid’s corners sit inside the corner grids; a light outline or a highlighter stops them blending in.
Where do you start on a printed samurai sudoku?
In the shared boxes, with a pencil line. A shared box can be scanned from four directions instead of two: its rows run on into the corner grid on one side and the centre grid on the other, and its columns run up into one and down into the other. Cross-hatching, drawing a line along each row and column that already holds a digit to see where that digit can still go in a box, finds placements there that neither grid shows alone. This one is on page 2 of the Hard PDF. Rows and columns are counted across the whole 21-cell board, so R7C8 is the seventh row down and the eighth column across.
That is not a lucky board. Before a single digit is written, 94 of the 100 Hard puzzles have at least one digit that can be placed in a shared box only with lines from both grids, and so do 88 Easy, 99 Medium and 75 Expert puzzles. The game page draws the other cross-grid move, a cell one grid cannot settle and its neighbour can, and measures why the shared boxes are the tightest part of the board.
How do you check your samurai sudoku answers?
The solutions are at the back, four to a page in puzzle order, each drawn in the same shape as its puzzle, so you can lay your page beside the key and compare grid by grid. Because each puzzle has only one answer, any cell where your grid and the key differ is a mistake, never a second valid solution.
An answer key only works if the puzzle has one answer. With two, you could finish a legal grid that disagrees with the key and never know whether you had slipped. Samurai boards are prone to it: when we tested a generator that blanked cells without checking, 150 of the 160 boards it made had more than one answer. Ours checks after every cell it removes and keeps a removal only while the answer stays single.
To check part of a solve without seeing the rest, cover the key with a sheet of paper and uncover one grid at a time, starting with the shared boxes, where one wrong digit spoils two grids. Stuck halfway and suspect an error? Copy the givens and the digits you are sure of into the Samurai Sudoku solver. It flags a digit repeated in any row, column or box of either grid and reports when the board has no solution left; if your digits are all right it solves the rest, so keep it for last.
Can you play these samurai puzzles online?
Not these exact puzzles. The PDFs were dealt from fixed seeds, so the files never change; the online game deals a new board from the same generator each time you press New Game, at the same four levels, and saves your progress in the browser. The daily Samurai Sudoku gives everyone the same board each day. For other variants on paper, the printable sudoku page lists every set, including Killer and Jigsaw.