Beyond Sudoku: Kakuro and Futoshiki

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It’s been a couple of decades since Sudoku first appeared in newspapers in the United States, and KenKen followed a few years later. Even if you are not a fan of these types of puzzles, I encourage you to introduce them to students. Whenever math problem solving and logical thinking can be integrated into a puzzle, it’s a win-win. This is a great time of year to inject something novel into the curriculum, so if you have never tried Kakuro and Futoshiki puzzles, the ready-made tutorials in this post should make it easy for you to learn and teach your students.

KAKURO

Kakuro puzzles aren’t really new; they’ve also been known as “Cross Sums” puzzles. “Kakuro” in Japanese translates as “addition cross.” Here is a slide show tutorial you can use to introduce it to your students. You can find Kakuro puzzles online here and free printables here. Jim Bumgardner, also known as KrazyDad, has developed a slightly different version of Kakuro, and you can find both printable and online versions to share with your students here. If you’ve not discovered Krazydad’s puzzles, you might like to also check out the many versions of Sudoku available at his site.

FUTOSHIKI

Futoshiki is similar to Sudoku but includes greater than and less than signs in the puzzle. Introducing these puzzles is a great way to reinforce the mathematical symbols (< and >) for younger students who are advanced in math. Depending on their grasp of the symbols, they may need to turn the puzzle to solve it. Here is another tutorial slide show intended for use with younger students, but could also be used to quickly introduce the puzzle to those in higher grades. You can find printable Futoshiki puzzles here and both printable and online versions at Krazydad.com.

It’s easy to find other sources of these puzzles and you might even consider adding them to your logic center if you have one. You can hold classroom contests and even send the interactive puzzle links to students via Google Classroom. Students can send screenshots of their solved puzzles.

You might also want to use these free handouts if you’d like to have your students solve the puzzles that are presented in the tutorials.

What other Japanese puzzles have you tried with your gifted and advanced students? Comment below and also consider subscribing if you’d like to have free resources sent to your email inbox every seven to ten days!