X-Wing Practice Puzzles

Every puzzle below is verified to feature the X-Wing as its hardest required technique — of the 65,284 puzzles in our library, 15,175 require it and 12,995 need nothing harder. New to the pattern? Learn the X-Wing or see a worked example first.

How to drill the X-Wing

The X-Wing is the first technique that reasons across the grid rather than inside a single unit, and that jump is what these puzzles are for. Find a digit that has exactly two possible cells in each of two different rows, and those cells line up in the same two columns. Whichever way the digit falls, it occupies one cell in each column, so it can be eliminated from those columns everywhere else.

The reasoning is worth reconstructing rather than memorising as a shape, because it works identically with rows and columns swapped, and solvers who learn it as a picture routinely miss the transposed version.

The practical problem is knowing when to look. Hunting for X-Wings on a grid that still has singles in it is wasted effort. The trigger is a stalled position with candidate counts already reduced — which is exactly why Naked Pairs and Omissions come first on the ladder: they produce the two-candidate rows an X-Wing needs.

Curated X-Wing puzzles

  1. Practice puzzle #1 — 24 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  2. Practice puzzle #2 — 24 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  3. Practice puzzle #3 — 25 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  4. Practice puzzle #4 — 24 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  5. Practice puzzle #5 — 24 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  6. Practice puzzle #6 — 24 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  7. Practice puzzle #7 — 24 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  8. Practice puzzle #8 — 24 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  9. Practice puzzle #9 — 23 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  10. Practice puzzle #10 — 26 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  11. Practice puzzle #11 — 26 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
  12. Practice puzzle #12 — 24 givens · needs Naked Single, Hidden Single, X-Wing
Get a fresh X-Wing puzzle →

X-Wing practice FAQ

How many Sudoku puzzles require the X-Wing technique?
Of the 65,284 puzzles in the Precision Sudoku library, 15,175 require the X-Wing to solve, and 12,995 can be completed with nothing harder than the X-Wing. Every puzzle is verified by a solver that records the exact techniques needed.
When should I start looking for an X-Wing?
Only after singles, omissions and subsets are exhausted. An X-Wing needs a digit with exactly two homes in each of two lines, and that condition is usually created by the cheaper techniques. Hunting for one on a grid that still contains unplayed singles is almost always premature.
Does an X-Wing work on columns as well as rows?
Yes, exactly the same way with the roles swapped. Two columns in which a digit has only two homes, aligned on the same two rows, eliminate that digit from those rows elsewhere. Learning the argument rather than the picture is what makes the transposed case visible.