Many Sudoku beginners treat Sudoku like a one-step-at-a-time linear game – first you find the right number for this missing space, then the next, then the next, and so on until you’re done. But a more advanced understanding of Sudoku shows that some of the most successful Sudoku players know how to solve Sudoku puzzles by thinking ahead.

When you first get started playing Sudoku, it’s easy to get stuck. If you sometimes feel like you don’t know where to begin to solve a Sudoku puzzle, or if the grid starts to run together and you don’t know what to do next, or you don’t know how to approach a new Sudoku puzzle with a fresh, momentum-building perspective, then you might want to take a step back and try to look at the Sudoku grid in a new light.