If you keep solving the rest of the puzzle, eventually the answer will come clear, like for instance in the bottom right box, bottom center 1/4, the number is 1, because it’s the only 1 in that entire nine square box.
Which means that the 1 in the far bottom left box, left center cell is also a 1.
If you keep working from there eventually, the correct answer will pop out.
The hint button said the highlighted square should be solvable at this point, which was why I asked about it specifically.
Okay, well, let me think about this for a minute.
It looks like you have a lot of potential numbers written in that are not valid based on the other numbers inside of the boxes, rows, or columns that they are in.
I can see that you have a lot of paired numbers, like the third col from the left where you’ve got the matched 4 5 means that the other potential 4s and 5s inside of that box are not valid, for instance the 4 in the top leftmost cell of that box is not a valid potential, leaving 2 3 7.
The 2 4 combo on the middle right box also removes the 2 4 from the 2 3 4 7 on the middle right lower line and the 2 from the 2 3 8 in the center box bottom left square.
The matched 3 8 in that column from that cell and the topmost cell removes the 3 from the 2 3 9 right below that, leaving 2 9, and the 2 3 9 below that also becomes a 2 9, removing the 2 from the cell on the other side of the 1 in the bottom center box, leaving 3 4 7.
This also means that the leftmost column has two sets of 3 7, which means that you can eliminate the 3 7 from the bottom box top left square, leaving only 2 as the option.
Which, going from that cell and moving rightward, it means the next open cell is a 9
That’s right about the limit of my ability to process this without actually making changes to the board, to see and keep calculating further things, but if you keep following down that path of eliminating other cells when you have a group that matches, either two digits in the same row or column are exactly the same, or two digits in the same box are the same, you can remove them from other rows and columns and boxes.
Getting rid of known red herrings will help simplify this entire board quite a bit.
Another thing to keep track of is that once you have eliminated or like filled in all of the potential numbers in groups or sections, like then that’s the number.
So, iif you’ve got two cells that have the exact same numbers, then no other cells in that row or column or box can contain those digits.
It can get a little bit trickier when you have three digits in three cells that all contain the same numbers, but it’s still doable.
And when you have three cells with three sets of numbers, then, like, the math gets a little wonky. So, for instance, if you have a 1 2, a 1 5, and a 2 5, then all of the other cells in the corresponding box, row, or column cannot contain 1, 2, or 5.
It goes the same for 1 2 5, 1 2, 1 5, or any other combination thereof.
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I went ahead and solved it. The last step was finding the 9 in the lower right hand box, after that the top row collapsed and everything else flowed out:
