Sudoku and Hidato are both grid-based logic puzzles you solve by pure deduction, so solvers naturally wonder how alike they really are. The short answer: Hidato 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: Any connected shape
- Closeness to Sudoku: Distant
- Also called: Hidoku, Number Snake
What is Hidato?
Fill the grid with a consecutive run of numbers so that each number touches the next, diagonals included. Here are the rules in full:
- Place 1 to N so consecutive numbers are adjacent - orthogonally or diagonally.
- Every cell is used once, forming an unbroken chain.
- Given numbers, including the endpoints, pin the path down.
See a Hidato path
Hidato fills the grid with a consecutive run of numbers so each touches the next - diagonals allowed. Here 1 to 9 wind through a 3×3 grid, with the 8→9 step going diagonally.
1 to 9 as one chain; consecutive numbers touch, orthogonally or diagonally (8→9).
Like Numbrix, both puzzles fill a whole grid by deduction with a single solution - but Hidato builds a consecutive path (diagonals allowed) rather than Latin rows and columns. No no-repeat or box rule applies, only the chain. It is a distant relative of Sudoku.
What Hidato shares with Sudoku
- Both fill a whole grid by pure deduction with a single solution.
- Both hinge on spotting the only placement a clue allows.
How Hidato differs from Sudoku
- It builds one consecutive path (diagonals allowed), not Latin rows and columns.
- There is no no-repeat or region rule - only the chain.
Do Sudoku skills transfer?
Like Numbrix, no digit technique carries over, yet the forced-next-step reasoning is the same instinct Sudoku singles train.
The verdict
Hidato is Numbrix with diagonal moves - Sudoku's logical spirit in a path-building shell.
Where to play it
If it was Sudoku you came for, the level is the choice that matters more than the variant - Hidato and Sudoku part ways on the rules, but a Sudoku grid can be a two-minute warm-up or an hour of work depending on nothing but how much of it you are given.
Difficulty and type are two separate dials here: the type sets the extra rule, the level sets how much of the grid you start with. Easy Sudoku leaves 36 of the 81 cells filled, so there is always an obvious next move somewhere; Evil Sudoku leaves 23, with no easy moves at all. Take it at the gentler end while the pattern is still new, and move up once it stops being a fight.