How to Solve 

KenKen® Puzzles
by Roy Leban

If you like Sudoku, there’s a good chance you’ll love KenKen. If you hate
Sudoku, there’s a good chance you’ll love KenKen. Invented by Japanese
mathematics teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto in 2004, KenKen is an elegant and
rich logic puzzle with a few easy-to-understand rules, which helps explain
why New York Times Puzzle Editor Will Shortz called it “The most addictive
puzzle since Sudoku.”

KenKen’s rules are straightforward:

1. Fill in each square cell in the puzzle with a number between 1 and
the size of the grid. For example, in a 4×4 grid, use the numbers 1, 2,
3, & 4.
2. Use each number exactly once in each row and each column.
3. The numbers in each “Cage” (indicated by the heavy lines) must
combine — in any order — to produce the cage’s target number
using the indicated math operation. Numbers may be repeated within
a cage as long as rule 2 isn’t violated.
4. No guessing is required. Each puzzle can be solved completely using
only logical deduction. Harder puzzles require more complex
deductions.

That’s all you need to know. The rest is just logical deduction derived from
those rules.

Solving Techniques

Here’s a sample puzzle that we’ll use to illustrate solving techniques:

Each cage in a KenKen contains a target number and most contain an
operator. If you see a single-cell cage with just a number and no operator, it
means that the value in that cell is the target number. Such single-cell cages
work like givens in Sudoku puzzles. You won’t see these in every puzzle, but
when you do see one, you should start there. In this puzzle, we can
immediately place a 4 in the upper right cell:
Whenever we place a number, this narrows down the possibilities for other
cells, so we want to look for that. In this puzzle, we know that the 7+ cage in
the third column must contain 3 & 4, since that is the only possibility that adds
to 7. Given the 4 that we just placed, combined with the rule that we must use
each number exactly once in each row and each column, we can now tell
which of the cage’s cell contains a 3 and which contains a 4:
We can now tell that the two empty cells in the third column (in the 4× cage)
contain 1 & 2, but we don’t know the order. However, given that information,
we can place a 2 in the lower right cell to make the cage’s product be 4:
Remember that a cage can repeat numbers in an irregularly shaped cage as
long as no number is duplicated within a single row or column. In this puzzle,
before we knew the two values in the 7+ cage, we didn’t know if the 4× cage
contained the numbers 1, 1, & 4 or 1, 2, & 2. Now that we know about the 2,
we can immediately finish the 4× cage because we know the second 2 must
be in the third row:
For more complex deductions, it can be useful to take notes in the puzzle,
which you can do by using the right side of the on-screen keyboard, holding
down the Shift key while typing on a physical keyboard, or switching to Pencil
input with TouchWrite. In the 2÷ cage in the upper left, there are only two
possibilities — 1 & 2 or 2 & 4. The latter is excluded by the 3 & 4 already in
the row, so we can deduce that two cells contain 1 & 2 (in an unknown order).
Since knowing this doesn’t let us place any additional numbers immediately,
we can use notes to help us remember it for future use.
Next, we can look at the 1- cage in the first column. Without knowing any
constraints, the cells can contain 1 & 2 or 2 & 3 or 3 & 4. But our notes show
us that the first column will already contain either a 1 or 2, which means the 1-
cage cannot contain 1 & 2. This means it must have either 2 & 3 or 3 & 4.
Whichever it is, it means the 1- cage will definitely contain a 3. And that
means the bottom left cell cannot be a 3, which means it must be a 4:
That also lets us place the 3 in the bottom row and then the 4 in the second
row tells us how to place the 1 and the 4 above it:
Now we can place the 2 and then the 1 in the top row:
Next, we finish up the first column, and we can tell the order because the third
row already has a 2 in it:

Finally, we wrap up the puzzle by placing the last two numbers in the fourth
column:
Note that this is just one way to solve this puzzle. Because this is an Easy
puzzle, there is more than one deductive path for solving. With harder
puzzles, this is not always the case.

Hints

If you’re just getting started with KenKen puzzles, don’t forget you can get

hints. Just tap on the   icon to fill in a value or remove mistakes.