Sudoku Flow
Lesson 20

XYZ-Wing

The rule

At least one of a pivot and its two wings must hold their shared number, so any cell that sees all three loses that candidate.

Step by step

  1. The pivot cell has exactly three candidates 2, 8 and 5, and it sees two bivalue wings: one with 2 and 5, the other with 8 and 5. This forms an XYZ-Wing!
  2. Since at least one of the three cells must be 5, we can remove the candidate 5 from any other cell that sees all three.

Try it on more boards

Each board is a real puzzle from our app, at a moment where XYZ-Wing applies. Find the step yourself, or tap Hint and the app's own hint walks you through it.

Sudoku app icon

Want more boards like this?

We also make a Sudoku app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android. There are no ads in it at all, it works offline, and when you ask for a hint it shows you the technique instead of just filling in a number.

Sudoku Flow is made by Rubigo Games, the developer of the Sudoku app recommended on this site.