I do the daily Kakuro on Shockwave.com most days. The easiest is on Mondays and the hardest usually on Sundays. I’ve never tried one with pencil and paper.
The “Second Degree” Brown and Black Belt books were definately much harder than their first series counterparts. On the other hand, I think the “Second Degree” Black Belt book was not so much harder than the “Second Degree” Brown. They were both extremely challenging. If I was to re-brand them I’d rename both of the “Second Degree” difficult books as black belt, and the first black belt would drop to a brown belt.
That said, there’s a lot of benefit in doing less than very difficult kakuro. The Mensa book, as well as the small red volume called *Take the Kakuro Challenge *are both well-done. To me, the best way to get really good at kakuro is practice practice and more practice. It’s not enough to memorize the single combination entries. You need to get to the point where you already know without thinking what are all the possibilities for a five-entry “33” or a six-entry “23.” Then you will do much better when wrestling with the harder puzzles. And the only way to get to that point is to do the easier high-quality puzzles over and over.
Okay, this is going to sound hokey… but oh well…
Kakuro is, to me, almost a meditation. A well-constructed three-star puzzle can be a pleasure to solve, even though you are not wearing out your eraser. It’s an immersion into mathematics and logic. The satisfaction of filling in the squares at a semi-flowing pace is real.
And even two-star puzzles have a certain charm. There’s a series of 8 kakuro books available from Amazon by Dave LeCompte. They’re called something like 200 Crazy Clever Kakuro Puzzles. None of them are very hard, but the quality of the paper and the obvious respect for kakuro is evident. The final puzzles in each book are absolutely huge— the largest kakuro I’ve seen anywhere. The squares are tiny indeed on the page for these mammoth kakuro grids, and there is great fun to be had filling in the massive puzzles. While the first book in that series had a few errors, the rest did not. I will definitely buy again if any more of this series ever comes out —even if they don’t exactly burn out my noggin. I cannot think of a better series for the intermediate solver or for someone you think has the potential to be hooked on kakuro.
Hi all,
I’ve been working on a kakuro puzzle that I’ve become stuck on. Is there any way that I can post an image here so that I might ask for some help?
Thanks
Sue
Welcome to the SDMB, Chantarelle.
We don’t allow images to be posted directly here. There are several free places where you can upload in image on the net (TinyPic, for example), and you can then link to that image from your post.
Seems like a good time to plug the Nick Snels Kakuro series. I got the first book and was disappointed to see some of the numbers already given in the grid. However, once I began solving I realized this kakuro “help” still left me with a bunch of large super tough puzzles. If you like your kakuro extremely challenging, then give this series a try. Excellent kakuro.
Thanks engineer_comp_geek
I’ve done Kakuro puzzles for a while now, but I get to a certain point on the tough ones (well, they’re tough for me anyway) and just give up. With this particular puzzle, I’m determined to finish it. I’ve done a LOT of googling over the last couple of days, and found that some people compare row totals to column totals to find missing square/s. I understand the theory of that, but I just can’t SEE it.
Anyway, I’ve created a link as you suggested, and would love any assistance. Not just to complete this one, but to help with techniques to solve other puzzles that I may have given up on in the past.
Well, I could probably do more if I used pencil and paper, but just from looking at it, the first thing I’ve found is that in the 32 row, the second box, where you have 456: The 5 is impossible. There must be a 6 somewhere in that row, and the only possible places are in the first two boxes. If it’s in the second box, then that box isn’t a 5, and if it’s the first box, then boxes 3, 4, and 5 of that row must be 1 2 3. There’s only one way to arrange those, which puts a 9 in the bottom of the 12 column, hence an 8 just to its left, hence a 9 at the end of the 32 row, hence a 4 rather than a 5 in the second square of that row.
…and on looking at it even more, I find something even more obvious. Look at the 32 row and the 35 row. Both must have a 6 in them, and in both, the only possible location is in the first two squares. Thus, neither of those columns can have a 6 anywhere else. This should lead to a few other results, including a definite value for at least one square.
Thanks, Chronos,
Sorry for taking so long to reply. Unfortunately, I don’t get as much time to look at this stuff as I’d like.
Anyway, in reply to your first comment, it kind of makes sense, however seems to be bordering on trial and error? But I think I applied everything, and it helped eliminate a few possibilities. In reply your second comment, I did at one point have those sixes eliminated. I must have put them back, not trusting my own thinking. But I removed them again, and looked at it and looked at it until I was actually able to complete those sixes.
So I’ve progressed a little, and posted a new image online. (I had accidentally left off the bottom square of the 42 column, but it was probably pretty obvious that I’d filled it with a 6)
Many thanks again for any help provided