White Belt Kakuro: 150 Puzzles

The exercises are well constructed, but tougher than you might think from the "White Belt" title. This surprised me because the "Green Belt" sudoku book is very easy. The squares on the right edge of the later left pages are cramped by the stiffness of the binding.

I was looking for a different puzzle after playing Sudoku, and I think I found a new favorite. Kakuro is basically a number crossword. each row's sum must equal the number in the black triangle left to it, and each column's sum equals the number in the black triangle above it. I just started with this easy puzzle book, but I still find it challenging. There are six "warm-up" puzzles (half-page), and the rest are full-paged. I'm definitely getting addicted to Kakuro!!

I like the puzzle size in this book. They are full page size puzzles and take a while to solve. They are not filled with black spaces so you have quite a few combinations to solve. It makes puzzle solving a pleasure!

I like to consider myself a puzzle lover, and even though I haven't mastered Sudoku (I'm a second-degree brown belt), I switched over to Kakuro in the hopes of improving my problem-solving "a-ha" abilities. Kakuro is similar to sudoku but incorporates more of a numerical crossword puzzle framework. At times I feel like I'm relearning arithmetic; even though the equations are the sum of single digits, there are numerous combinations which make you feel like you're a first grader (aka "how could I have added 1+2+3 and get 7?"). The great thing about this series is that on the last page of the book, there is a list of unique combinations, which are key to solving the puzzles (e.g. a three-digit combination for 24 can only consist of 7+8+9). You will find yourself relying heavily on this sheet because, after all, the numbers will soon start to blend together, but in a good way. Another side effect from kakuro is that when I returned to my sudoku puzzles, I found that I was challenged again, and that is just as good of a feeling as solving the puzzle itself.