Techniques › X-Wing › Practice
Practise the X-Wing
One digit, two rows, two columns. The first pattern that spans the whole grid.
8 real positions, each taken from an actual puzzle at the moment this was the cheapest move available. Two steps: find the cells that form the pattern, then find the candidate it rules out. A near miss tells you how many you had right, so getting it wrong is worth something.
| 4 | 7 | 8 | 26 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 26 | 5 |
| 5 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 68 | 28 | 26 | 7 | 4 |
| 1 | 6 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 9 | 8 |
| 6 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 1 | 5 | 9 | 3 | 2 |
| 7 | 5 | 3 | 9 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 1 |
| 9 | 2 | 1 | 48 | 48 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 6 |
| 2 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 5 | 246 | 46 | 7 | 26 | 1 | 3 |
| 3 | 1 | 7 | 268 | 5 | 28 | 4 | 26 | 9 |
How to spot it
Pick a digit and mark every row where it has exactly two homes. Compare those rows in pairs: if two of them use the same column positions, you have one. Then do the same with columns.
Full explanation on the X-Wing reference page.
Practise something else
- Swordfish An X-Wing with three rows and three columns instead of two.
- Jellyfish The four-row fish. Valid, beautiful, and almost never necessary.
- XY-Wing A pivot and two pincers. Whichever way the pivot falls, one pincer takes the digit.
- Simple Colouring Follow one digit's forced chain through the grid in two alternating colours.