I was at a book store Friday night and noticed a few kakuro books nestled into a display of sudoku related books. It looks like publishers are thinking that the current popularity of sudoku can help them sell book about another puzzle with a Japanese name.
Of course, kakuro (or cross-sum) puzzles aren’t new, but the buzz about them in the US has only risen very recently. Major web sites related to kakuro have shown up in the past six months, and it’s not hard to find blogs that discuss the puzzles and how to solve them.
I’ve often heard sudoku called a number crossword, which seemd odd too me since a sudoku is nothing like a crossword. There are, however, many similarites between crosswords and kakuro. A kakuro grid more closely resembles an American crossword grid. In a crossword, you are given a clue and the answer is limitted by how many blocks are available and by intersecting answers. Likewise with kakuro, you must find digits that sum to a specific value but you are limitted by the number of spaces and the intersecting sums. Additionally, no sum can contain the same digit twice.
It’ll be interesting to see if kakuro can become as big as sudoku and, if it does, what other kinds of puzzles will become popular after it.
Image from wikipedia.
Tags: kakuro,puzzles
If you are interested in Kakuro (Crosssums) feel free to discuss this on the crosssums forum. If you have a website related to Kakuro you can also submit your link on this forum or on http://www.crosssums.net
Comment by Marcel le — July 18, 2006 @ 2:19 am