How to play kakuro
The rules in about a minute, how to read a clue cell, and a small board solved with you from the first square to the last.
Level upSolving techniques
Forced combinations, crossing runs, high and low limits, and the 45 rule. Five patterns that do most of the pouncing.
ReferenceCombinations chart
Every clue for every run length from 2 to 9 cells, with the forced ones marked so you can spot them at a glance.
Why kakuro is worth learning
If sudoku is already a habit, kakuro is the obvious next one. The no-repeat rule will feel like home, and the clue sums stack a second kind of reasoning on top of it, so a cell can be settled two different ways and you get to choose which. The arithmetic itself never grows past adding a few small numbers. Nothing here is a math test. The pleasure is watching a grid that looked shut quietly open.
The puzzle has been in newspapers and puzzle magazines for decades under a pile of names, Cross Sums and Kakkuro among them, and a properly set grid gives back exactly what a good crossword does: a slow, patient unknotting that never once asks you to guess. It also happens to suit the company of a cat. One of you works the crossings, the other supervises from the arm of the chair, and between you the board gets finished.
Practice makes permanent
Catkuro has 2,000+ free puzzles, a twenty-five-chapter ramp that starts about as small as a kakuro can get, and helpers that put exactly the combinations these guides teach right under the board. Start with four cats and bring five more home through Act 1, and no ad ever interrupts a solve.
