With this week’s rollout of the iOS 18.2 developer beta for iPhone models that support Apple Intelligence, several developers were quick to discover that Apple added a fourth daily puzzle to the Puzzles section in Apple News+, and that is Sudoku.
Taking on the same counterpart from the New York Times, Sudoku on Apple News+ offers daily puzzles with three difficulties to choose from: Easy, Medium, and Hard. As you’d expect, a Sudoku puzzle is a 9×9 grid with a random arrangement of numbers, and in order to complete the puzzle, every unique digit (from 0-9) must appear once in a row, column, and a smaller 3×3 block. As with other News+ puzzles, Sudoku also offers statistics such as the number of puzzles solved and the current/longest streaks.
Sudoku will be exclusive to Apple News+ and Apple One subscribers. Apple News+ is just $12.99 USD/month, and it’s also included in the Premier plan for Apple One, which bundles Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, and iCloud (2TB of storage) for just $37.95 USD/month.
Sudoku on Apple News+ will be coming to iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and most likely macOS Sequoia 15.2. Currently, the developer beta of iOS 18.2 is currently limited to iPhone 15 Pro and all iPhone 16 models, but it will expand to other iPhone models later this fall. iOS 18.2 will also roll out additional features of Apple Intelligence, including Image Playground and Genmoji. Note that you will need to join the waitlist to try out those features.
I have always loved crossword and other word/logic puzzles ever since I started playing Sudoku, Wordle, and eventually other games from the New York Times. I even started trying out News+ recently to play their games as well. News+ has been expanding its Puzzles section since 2023:
- the vanilla Crossword in iOS 17,
- the Mini Crossword in iOS 17,
- Quartiles in iOS 17.5, and recently,
- Sudoku in iOS 18.2.
As an avid puzzle solver, I’ve always wanted Apple to expand its Puzzles section, especially when it’s taking on the New York Times for its daily puzzles, but it looks like adding Sudoku is more than a welcome step in becoming a better alternative to NYT.
