Sudoku Made and maintained by Brian Hamilton and Karan Hamilton.
Brian builds the playable puzzle tools, while Karan helps test clarity, difficulty feel, and the player experience.
Playable puzzles and controls are tested in the browser for rule accuracy, usability, and a clear solving experience. See how we make and test puzzles, our editorial standards, or report a problem.
Music Sudoku: From Garage Band to Orchestra
Music Sudoku is classic Sudoku played with nine musical tiles — music note, guitar, piano, drum, microphone, headphones, saxophone, trumpet, and violin. Perform it with icons, with digits, or with both on stage together; whoever is performing, each tile appears exactly once in every row, column, and box.
The band grows with the board
Tiles join in order, and this set assembles like a career. The 4x4 board is a self-contained garage band: music note, guitar, piano, and drum. The microphone and headphones arrive at 6x6 — the recording studio years. The saxophone, trumpet, and violin only join on the full 9x9, when the orchestra finally shows up. The pair to watch on the big board is the saxophone and the trumpet, both curved and brass-gold at phone size; the Both display mode gives each a small number label, which settles more disputes than a conductor.
Yes, you can put notes on the note
This is the one board where the Notes feature gets confusing to talk about, so to be clear: Notes are the small pencil marks you place in a cell while you are still deciding, and the music note is tile number one. Which means that on a hard puzzle you will, at some point, pencil a note that says a cell might be the note. We considered renaming one of them and decided the sentence was too enjoyable to lose.
Between practice and the recital
Music students already think in patterns — scales, intervals, counting rhythm — and Sudoku scanning is the same muscle without the sound. That makes this board a natural fit for the quiet gaps around lessons: the waiting room beforehand, the wind-down after practice, the long minutes before a recital when an instrument cannot come out of its case. To be clear about what it will not do: this page teaches deduction, not an instrument. The theme is the invitation.
A 6x6 Easy takes most players five to ten minutes — almost exactly the gap between arriving early and the lesson starting.
Coda
Every puzzle resolves to a single solution: no tile repeats in any row, column, or box, and nobody plays over anyone else. Difficulty grading and the hint system get their programme notes on the Themed Sudoku page, together with the rest of the repertoire.
Music Sudoku FAQ
The set builds up in order: the 4x4 board uses the music note, guitar, piano, and drum; the microphone and headphones arrive at 6x6; and the saxophone, trumpet, and violin only appear on the full 9x9.
Notes are the small pencil marks you place in a cell while narrowing down candidates — a solving feature available on every board. The music note is simply tile number one in this theme. On a hard puzzle you may well pencil a note saying a cell might be the note.
No. The puzzle is pure deduction and never asks anything about music — the instruments are just the symbols. If the brass tiles blur at small sizes, switch the display to numbers or both.