The Hardest Sections Puzzles
These are the hardest Sections puzzles in the archive. Hardly anyone finishes them, and the people who do take a long time about it. The one at the top has beaten more players than anything else we have published.
Grid size is a poor guide. A 9×9 with generous starting numbers can fall in two minutes, while a tight 6×6 whose sections all overlap will stall you for twenty. What makes these hard is the missing opening: no cell is forced until you chain two or three constraints together, which is exactly what the solving tips cover.
The 25 hardest Sections puzzles, ranked
You have solved 0 of these 25
- 1June 4, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 33:2529%of players finished
- 2June 24, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 32:5429%of players finished
- 3May 25, 2026Hard · 8×8 · avg 21:5031%of players finished
- 4April 23, 2026Hard · 8×8 · avg 19:2527%of players finished
- 5April 28, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 35:3048%of players finished
- 6June 23, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 21:3047%of players finished
- 7January 23, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 23:2951%of players finished
- 8June 7, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 22:0851%of players finished
- 9April 24, 2026Hard · 8×8 · avg 16:4643%of players finished
- 10May 6, 2026Hard · 7×7 · avg 18:5653%of players finished
- 11March 8, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 15:2247%of players finished
- 12June 21, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 18:4653%of players finished
- 13June 30, 2026Hard · 7×7 · avg 14:4544%of players finished
- 14June 15, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 16:4751%of players finished
- 15July 10, 2026Hard · 8×8 · avg 18:2154%of players finished
- 16September 5, 2026Hard · 8×8 · avg 15:0749%of players finished
- 17June 17, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 18:1855%of players finished
- 18July 1, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 15:5954%of players finished
- 19June 11, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 18:3457%of players finished
- 20February 23, 2025Hard · 9×9 · avg 14:2452%of players finished
- 21March 24, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 17:0657%of players finished
- 22June 27, 2026Hard · 8×8 · avg 12:4149%of players finished
- 23September 8, 2026Hard · 8×8 · avg 15:1555%of players finished
- 24August 8, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 18:0558%of players finished
- 25July 14, 2026Hard · 9×9 · avg 15:0455%of players finished
How this list is worked out
The order comes from two numbers, weighted the same. One is the share of players who start a puzzle and go on to finish it. The other is how long the finishers take. So a puzzle most people eventually beat, after twenty minutes of work, can sit above one that stops more people inside five.
A percentage and a stopwatch reading cannot be averaged against each other, so the archive is ranked twice, once on each number, and the two placings are averaged. The percentage beside each puzzle is its completion rate. The average time is on the line below it. That is why the percentages jump about instead of counting steadily down the page.
A puzzle needs ten finishes before it can appear here, and the ranking refreshes once a day. Recent puzzles shift around the most, since fewer solves are carrying their numbers.
Grid size does not come into it. Size is a rough proxy at best, and some of the meanest puzzles here are small grids with tightly overlapping sections.