A while back there was a post on Passion for Puzzles about a new kind of puzzle called KenKen puzzles. The puzzle was featured on the Times Online site where a few puzzles were printed along with an article about the puzzles’ creator Tetsuya Miyamoto. To be honest, I only skimmed the article. It seemed to be more about the creator’s teaching philosophy than about puzzles.
KenKen puzzles are a variation of killer sudokus. The layout is exactly the same. The only difference is that the groups of boxes have not only a number, which in killer sudoku would represent the sum of the numbers in the boxes, but they also contain an arithmetic operator which tells you what to do with the numbers. They need not only be sums. They can be differences, products, or quotients.
Enjoy!
Tags: kenken,puzzles,sudoku
It’s Really Cool and challenging This Game!
I found it in a german magazine and it was great!
unfortunatelly it’s still not wide spread and i cannot find any of it anymore!!
wish to know where to play it online or wish to know a book for kenken puzzle!!!
Comment by ahmed — May 5, 2008 @ 5:40 pm
While I found these puzzles interesting at first, once you’ve done a dozen or so they ceased to be challenging.
However, there’s a variation on this that gives you the total to reach but omits the operator, so it’s an additional factor for you to figure out. I’ve found that this is the only way (for me) that these puzzles remain challenging.
Comment by Francis — May 12, 2008 @ 5:05 am
[...] in April, I put up a post about KenKen puzzles when they first started appearing on the Times Online site. Now Will Shortz is jumping on the [...]
Pingback by Will Shortz does KenKen » puzzlinks.com — September 7, 2008 @ 12:17 pm