Sudoku and Aquarium are both grid-based logic puzzles you solve by pure deduction, so solvers naturally wonder how alike they really are. The short answer: Aquarium is distant to Sudoku. Below we lay out what the two share, where they part ways, and whether the skills you have built on Sudoku will carry over.
- Grid: Rectangular, aquariums
- Closeness to Sudoku: Distant
What is Aquarium?
Fill aquariums with water so that within each one the water settles to a level, and the edge clues count the water in every row and column. Here are the rules in full:
- The grid is divided into aquariums; you shade cells to show water.
- Within one aquarium, water finds its level — a row of it is either all water or all air across that aquarium's width.
- Clues on the edges count the shaded cells in each row and column.
See an Aquarium grid
Aquarium shades cells as water, which settles to a level within each aquarium, while edge clues count the shaded cells per row and column. Below, water (blue) has filled the lower rows, air the top.
Water (blue) settles to a level; edge clues count the shaded cells.
The row and column counts drive placements the way Sudoku clues do, and it is a single-solution logic puzzle. But you shade water rather than place digits, and the water-level rule has no Sudoku equivalent — a distant relative.
What Aquarium shares with Sudoku
- The row-and-column counts drive placements much as Sudoku clues do.
- It is a pure-logic, single-solution puzzle solved by elimination.
How Aquarium differs from Sudoku
- You shade water, not place digits, and the grid ends black-and-white.
- The water-level rule inside each aquarium has no Sudoku equivalent.
Do Sudoku skills transfer?
No digit technique transfers, but the count-driven elimination — "this row still needs three shaded and only three fit" — is the same instinct a Sudoku hidden single trains.
The verdict
Aquarium shares Sudoku's line-counting logic but resolves into shaded water, not numbers.