Master Index of Archived Threads
Ken-Ken
| Frayed Knot Jan 16 2010 12:37 PM |
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Anybody else do these things? The NYTimes started carrying them as a secondary puzzle - two of them actually - next to the crossword sometime during the last year. The Daily paper carries a 4x4 and a 6x6 while the Sunday magazine brings a 5x5 and a 7x7. For those who haven't seen them they're sort of a Sudoku with light math involved. I didn't start with them until the last few months or so and since I don't often get the paper during the week I usually just try these once a week. The 'fivers' I find pretty simple but the 'sevens' nearly impossible. This past Sunday's (1/10) became only my second completed 7x7 ever (and oddly it went very quickly) but the other dozen or so I've tried have left me hopelessly stuck and, like Sudokus, seeing the answer the following week doesn't help you figure out what you should have seen to get there. Not sure yet if this week's relative breeze meant that I'm getting better at them or just that it happened to be easier. I think the only thing I've figured out so far is that it helps to make a blown up copy of them so you've got more room to work.
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| cooby Jan 16 2010 01:13 PM Re: Ken-Ken |
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| Frayed Knot Jan 16 2010 02:44 PM Re: Ken-Ken |
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Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing single-digit numbers. Not exactly the sort of stuff that requires a high-tech computer, yaknowwhatimean?
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| Chad Ochoseis Jan 19 2010 09:53 PM Re: Ken-Ken |
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I'd always meant to try these, and I've been doing one every couple of days since I saw this thread. The Times online site publishes six daily - an "easy" and a "medium" 4 x 4, a "harder" 8 x 8, and one 6 x 6 at each of the three levels. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/crosswords/kenken.html I had nothing to do tonight, so I managed to get the 8x8. But it took more than two hours. What's nice about the online version is that it allows you to input the "candidates" into each box, so it's easier to keep track of possibilities you've eliminated. Quick tips that I've figured out, though they may be obvious: - Be on the lookout for cages that are exclusively in one row or one column - look for cages that add to very low numbers, subtract to very high numbers, add to very high numbers, or multiply to very high numbers (you can usually eliminate a lot of candidates in these cases) - look for cages where you have to multiply to a number that doesn't have many factors (if you've got a cage of two that multiplies to 15, you know it's got to have a 3 and a 5) - when you're stuck, forget about the arithmetic temporarily and take a sudoku approach
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| Frayed Knot Feb 03 2010 05:49 PM Re: Ken-Ken |
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Well I've managed to finish each of the 7x7 from the last three weeks of Sunday NYT (some semi-quickly, others not so much) so I guess it was just a matter of sticking with it and getting used to them after they seemed so frickin impossible when I first looked at them. Maybe I'll get bold and try one of the on-line 8x8s
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