August 5th, 2009

Number Puzzle Games

Do you have a favorite number puzzle game? It seems that everyone is playing some form of these kind of games. It can be Sudoku, Hitori or Kakuro, and it it a pleasant and intelligent way to spend free time. They are so popular now, that it seems that they have conquered many people.

Since 2004, Sudoku started to be popular, and it appeared in UK in "The Times", alongside the regular Crossword, another mind exercising game. Sudoku is sometimes spelled su Doku and it is known in the States as the "Number Place". The goal of playing Sudoku is to enter numerical digits, from 1 to 9 inclusive in each square of a 9x9 grid, composed of smaller 3x3 sub grids. There are some digits pre entered in few cells, and like they are often called "givens".

Each row and column in every 3x3 small grid must contain only one instant of every digit and completion of the game shows your patience and logical ability. This game became popular in 1986 and it achieved a great international popularity in 2005.

Kakuro is another number puzzle game which is often reffered as Sums Kakuro, and in Japan Kakro, and its popularity is growing day by day. Both games, Kakro and Sudoku can be named mathematical crosswords and they became popular in the UK through "The Guardian". Kakro is made up of a playing area with black and white squares, like a crossword, and some of the filled cells have a slash through them from the top left to the bottom right, which are "the clues". The goal is to insert numbers in the blank cells so that they total the numbers contained in the clue squares. Just like in Sudoku, digits can't be repeated and though it sounds simple, it is quite using your brain and becomes addictive.
number-puzzle-games

Hitori is grid based number puzzle game from Japan, somehow different to Sudoku and Kakro. At a first glance it might seem easier than the first two presented games, but more and more people find it as being equally challenging. Hitori starts the puzzle with a full grid of digits. The aim is to colour the numbers in the grid, and the rules are quite simple.

No number can appear more than once in a row or column. So if you have a digit three times in the same row, you should know that the other two instances of the digit should disappear. The coloured cells cannot be next to another cell; this means that a coloured cell can touch only another black cell on the diagonal side, and the white cells must be continous and not separated by black cells.

All these three number puzzle games are a very intelligent and pleasant way to spend your free time, and next to having fun, you can train you mathematical skills in the same time.