Sudoku and Masyu are both grid-based logic puzzles you solve by pure deduction, so solvers naturally wonder how alike they really are. The short answer: Masyu 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
- Closeness to Sudoku: Distant
- Also called: White Pearls and Black Pearls
What is Masyu?
Draw a single loop through the cell centres that passes through every pearl, obeying a straight-or-turn rule for white and black pearls. Here are the rules in full:
- Draw one closed loop through cell centres, moving horizontally and vertically.
- At a white pearl the loop goes straight through but must turn in at least one of the cells next to it.
- At a black pearl the loop turns 90°, then goes straight for a cell on both sides.
What a Masyu looks like
A Masyu is one loop drawn through the cell centres, obeying rules at white and black pearls (go straight through a white, turn at a black). Here is a small solved loop passing through two pearls.
A solved loop: straight through the white pearl (○), turning at the black pearl (●).
It is a single-solution logic puzzle solved by deduction, and both puzzles chain local constraints into a forced global answer. But the answer is a loop, not a filled number grid, and the pearls constrain its shape - no counting, no arithmetic. A distant relative.
What Masyu shares with Sudoku
- It is a single-solution logic puzzle solved by deduction alone.
- Both puzzles lean on chaining local constraints into a forced global answer.
How Masyu differs from Sudoku
- The answer is a loop, not a filled grid of numbers.
- The pearls constrain the loop's shape; there is no counting or arithmetic.
Do Sudoku skills transfer?
No digit technique carries over, but Masyu rewards the same forward-chaining logic - force one segment, see what it forces next - that solves hard Sudoku.
The verdict
Masyu is a loop puzzle that shares Sudoku's deductive spirit while looking nothing like it on the page.
Where to play it
If it was Sudoku you came for, the level is the choice that matters more than the variant - Masyu 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.