If you have read the beginner guide, you already know the basics: start with one-square colors, look for the last empty square, and mark the squares that every option touches. Normal boards are 7x7 and often have no one-square color at all, so the first move has to come from somewhere else. Let's solve one real board together: Normal 449.
PetDoku is a Queens puzzle. It has the same rules as Queens puzzles (including the daily Queens game on LinkedIn), Meowdoku and other cat sudoku and animal sudoku apps, so you can use everything in this guide in PetDoku, Queens puzzles and Meowdoku alike.
Normal 449. Seven colors, seven pets, and no color with just one square.
Hint 1: A color squeezed into one row
All three red squares are in the top row. Wherever the red pet goes, it uses up that row, so every other square in the top row is X.
Look at the shape of each color. If all of a color's squares sit in one row (or one column), its pet will take that line. No other color can put a pet there, so the rest of the line is X. On a fresh board this is often the first move.
Those X marks leave orange with two squares, both in the second row. Same hint again: the rest of the second row is X.
Notice the chain. Clearing the top row pushed orange into one row, and that cleared the second row. When you use this hint, check the colors right next to the line you just cleared.
Hint 2: Squares that every option touches
The second row has two choices left. Both of them touch the red square above and the two green squares below, so those three are X.
This is Hint 4 from the beginner guide. It gets more useful on Normal boards, where a row or a color is often down to two or three choices long before you can place anything.
It works for a whole color too. The indigo color has four choices, and every one of them touches the teal square on its right.
Hint 3: Two colors that share two columns
Teal and indigo only have choices in the sixth and seventh columns. Two colors need two pets, and those two pets will fill both columns. So no other color can use them: the red square at the top of the sixth column is X.
This is Hint 1 with two colors at once. Pick two colors and look at which columns their choices sit in. If together they only reach two columns, those two columns belong to them, and every other color's square in those columns is X. Rows work the same way.
The rest: one empty square at a time
6. The top row has one square left.7. So does the second row.8. Green has one square left.9. Then yellow.10. Then teal.11. The sixth row has one left.12. The last pet goes in the bottom row.
Solved: seven pets, one in each color, row and column.
When a Normal board gets stuck
Look for a color squeezed into one row or column (Hint 1), and follow the chain.
Look for a row or column that fits inside one color (beginner Hint 3).
Take the line or color with the fewest choices and find the squares they all touch (Hint 2).
Try pairs of colors: if two colors only reach two rows or columns, those lines are theirs (Hint 3).
PetDoku The JoyPlus Soft Planning Team
