Loading puzzles using bookmarklets

Sometimes you might be solving a puzzle on a different site and wishing you could copy the puzzle into the SudokuExchange.com web app — that’s where bookmarklets can help. These are little snippets of Javascript that you save in your bookmarks menu. Then you can later run the code by clicking on the menu option.

To get started, create a folder on your bookmarks toolbar and drag the bookmarklets links into the new folder:

Later when you’re on one of those sites, you can simply select the matching bookmarklet. When the code runs, it extracts the starting digits from the page you’re on, then opens a new tab with the same arrangement of digits, on the SudokuExchange.com web site:

Because the bookmarklets open a new tab when they run, you might need to allow pop-ups on the sites you’re ‘scraping’.

Cracking The Cryptic Cracking The Cryptic Updated: 26-Jun-2021

This will not import anything but the starting digits, so it is probably only useful for classic Sudoku puzzles and not for variants like killer, thermo, sandwich etc. which rely on extra lines, numbers and coloured regions. Support for the new app is experimental and if using the old app, you may need to confirm reloading the framed content directly.

New York Times Sudoku New York Times Sudoku

This should work for all the easy, medium and hard, Sudoku puzzles in the NYT puzzles section.

WebSudoku.com grid.websudoku.com

Using a bookmarklet on this site is a little tricky because it uses frames, but if you go direct to the framed page (easy, medium, hard or evil) the bookmarklet should work just fine.

FiendishSudoku.com FiendishSudoku.com

This bookmarklet doesn’t get a difficulty level so you might need to add that manually when you share.

Sudoku.brainsword.com sudoku.brainsword.com

Site has 5 difficulty levels: easy, medium, hard, expert, evil.

Sudoku.com Sudoku.com

This bookmarklet doesn’t get a difficulty level so you might need to add that manually when you share.

Sudoku.org.uk Sudoku.org.uk

This bookmarklet doesn’t get a difficulty level so you might need to add that manually when you share.

Sudoku.com.au Sudoku.com.au

This bookmarklet doesn’t get a difficulty level so you might need to add that manually when you share.

Sudoku.puzzlebaron.com Sudoku.puzzlebaron.com

This bookmarklet doesn’t get a difficulty level so you might need to add that manually when you share.

Sudokusolver.nl Sudokusolver.nl

Use this bookmarklet for the puzzles published regularly by the Twitter bot @SudokuSolverNL. Only works for the classic Sudoku puzzles

Puzzle stringsLoad 81 digit string into SudokuExchange.com

Some Sudoku community sites and forums use puzzle strings like this:

000001230123008040804007650765000000000000000000000123012300804080400765076500000

Or this:

.....123.123..8.4.8.4..765.765.....................123.123..8.4.8.4..765.765.....

To use this, you would first select the string of digits (typically with a mouse double-click or triple-click) before activating the bookmarklet.

Bookmarklets for sudoku.coach

The sudoku.coach bookmarklets page lists some of the bookmarklets from this page adapted to open puzzles on the sudoku.coach web site instead of Sudoku Exchange.

F-Puzzles ⇒ CTC

Visit the F-Puzzles ⇒ CTC bookmarklet page for a bookmarklet to use when you're solving a puzzle on F-Puzzles.com and wishing you could copy the puzzle into the Cracking the Cryptic web app. This bookmarklet does work for variant sudoku puzzles.

Write your own bookmarklet

If you like puzzles, you might enjoy the challenge of creating a bookmarklet to scrape another site. This tutorial page will get you started.

If you do create a bookmarklet and you’d like to have it listed here, raise an issue. As well as your bookmarklet code, remember to include the site URL, your name and any special instructions for use.