Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Kakuro. Topic: Logic.

Taking a break from math, here is an interesting puzzle. It's called Kakuro and it's similar to Sudoku, but not really the same either. Basically, you have a lot of open squares and some dark squares with a diagonal slash through them (and some irrelevent filled dark squares). These dark squares might have a number in the lower left corner and/or a number in the upper right corner.

Lower Left - All the consecutive blank spaces below contain different numbers (1-9) and sum to the number in the lower left corner of the dark square.

Upper Right - All the consecutive blank spaces to the right contain different numbers (1-9) and sum to the number in the upper right corner of the dark square.

These puzzles all have a unique solution that can be determined through logic (no guessing is necessary), but they can be very difficult! Take a stab at it. If it's too easy, check out some of the other puzzles on the site.

3 comments:

  1. This is HARD!!!! i get it,,, but i donno wut the "logic" part is.. mainly guess and check..

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  2. It's a linear programming problem. It can be solved by matrices. XD

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