Daily Sudoku

If you would rather choose the difficulty yourself and play as many as you like, use my regular large-print Sudoku. For something different, try today's Daily Cat Sudoku or browse all the brain puzzles.

The daily puzzle follows a fixed weekly pattern, so you know roughly what to expect:

• Monday and Tuesday are easy. A good place to begin if you are new to the puzzle or coming back after a break.
• Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are medium. They make you stop and think once or twice.
• Saturday and Sunday are hard. These are the most demanding puzzles the game sets.

The day changes at midnight UTC, which is midnight in London in winter, seven in the evening in New York, and mid-morning in Australia. So the new puzzle may arrive at an odd hour where you live, but it arrives at the same moment for everyone.

Today's puzzle is generated from today's date, which means every person opening this page today is solving the identical grid. Nobody gets an easier one, so you can compare notes with anyone else who played.

It also means the puzzle cannot be reshuffled. The Hint button explains why the number it places belongs there rather than simply filling it in.

Finish the puzzle and the site quietly counts the day. Come back tomorrow and finish again and it counts two, and so on. The count lives on your own device. I never see it, there is no account attached to it, and nobody else can look at it.

Miss a day and the count starts again from one. Nobody will email you about it.

The regular large-print Sudoku lets you choose your own difficulty and play as many as you like, and every grid there can be printed if you would rather solve it on paper with a pencil. There is a whole page of printable puzzles for that.