Easy Kakuro
Play it here with pencil marks and a clock. Every square falls to a clue with one writing, to the arithmetic of a nearly-full run, or to a digit with nowhere else to go.
What "easy" means on this page
An easy Kakuro here is one you can finish by pinning digits down, never by ruling them out. There are three ways a square gets pinned and they are worth naming, because knowing which one you are hunting for is most of the skill at this level.
The first is the clue that can be written one way only. Three across two squares is one and two; seventeen across two is eight and nine. You have not placed anything yet — you do not know which square takes which — but you have reduced two squares from nine possibilities to two.
The second is arithmetic. A run of four with one square still blank is a subtraction: the clue minus what is already written. That is the least glamorous move in the game and it accounts for more squares than anything else.
The third is a digit with nowhere else to go. If a run must contain a seven and only one of its squares can hold one, that square is a seven. This is the step most beginners never make, and it is why they conclude a grid is stuck when it is not.
Where to start on a blank grid
At the shortest runs with the most extreme clues, always. A two-square run clued three or seventeen, or a three-square run clued six or twenty-four, hands you the digits outright.
Then look for where two such runs cross. A square sitting on both a one-writing across run and a one-writing down run has to hold a digit belonging to both sets, and that is very often a single digit. Those crossings are the seeds the rest of the grid grows from.
What you should not do is start in the middle of a long run. Nine across five squares has plenty of writings and tells you almost nothing on its own; it becomes useful only after the runs crossing it have been narrowed.
The sizes on this page
These are eight-by-eight grids, which come out at around thirty squares to fill once the clue blocks are taken out. That is roughly a ten-minute puzzle at this level and fits four to a printed page at a size you can write in.
The grids are not all the same shape. The layout is drawn fresh for each puzzle, so the wall pattern differs every time — which matters more in Kakuro than in Sudoku, where the grid is always the same nine boxes.
Every puzzle on this page was checked before it was printed: exactly one answer, and finishable without ever ruling a digit out. If you find yourself needing to eliminate, you have missed one of the three moves above.
Common questions
- What makes a Kakuro puzzle easy?
- That every square can be pinned down rather than ruled out — by a clue with only one writing, by subtracting from a nearly-full run, or by a digit that has nowhere else in its run to go.
- Which clue should I start with in Kakuro?
- The shortest run with the most extreme sum. Three or seventeen across two squares, six or twenty-four across three: each of those can be written one way only, so it hands you the digits immediately.
- Can an easy Kakuro have more than one answer?
- Not one from here. Every puzzle is run through a solver that counts solutions and stops at two, and anything with a second answer is discarded before it reaches a page.
Check this before you rely on it. This tool is provided free and without warranty, and its results are not professional advice.