Sudoku and Magnets are both grid-based logic puzzles you solve by pure deduction, so solvers naturally wonder how alike they really are. The short answer: Magnets 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: Domino-tiled grid
- Closeness to Sudoku: Distant
- Also called: Magnet Puzzle
What is Magnets?
Fill a domino-tiled board with magnets and blanks so like poles never touch and the plus/minus counts around the edge come out right. Here are the rules in full:
- Each domino is a magnet with a + end and a − end, or is left blank.
- Two equal poles may never be orthogonally adjacent.
- The clues around the grid count the + and − cells in each row and column.
What a Magnets puzzle looks like
Magnets fills a domino-tiled board with magnets (a + and a − pole) and blanks, so like poles never touch and edge clues count the + and − cells. Here is a small solved board of two magnet dominoes.
Two magnet dominoes; note that no two like poles touch, even across the dominoes.
The edge counts force placements the way Sudoku clues do, and the "equal signs can't touch" rule rhymes with Sudoku's no-repeat neighbours. But you place magnet poles, not digits, and some dominoes stay blank - a distant relative.
What Magnets shares with Sudoku
- The edge counts force placements the way Sudoku clues do.
- The "equal signs can't touch" rule rhymes with Sudoku's no-repeat neighbours.
- It is a single-solution logic puzzle.
How Magnets differs from Sudoku
- You place magnet poles, not digits, and some dominoes stay blank.
- The domino tiling and polarity have no Sudoku counterpart.
Do Sudoku skills transfer?
No technique carries over literally, but balancing counts and forbidding neighbours is the same constraint-juggling Sudoku trains.
The verdict
Magnets shares Sudoku's count-and-constraint logic on a domino board of poles rather than digits.
Where to play it
If it was Sudoku you came for, the level is the choice that matters more than the variant - Magnets 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.