Finally making a number crossword
As mentioned in my last post about Kakuros I decided to take the grid structure from an app and fill in my own clues and solutions. That helps accelerate the process of getting to actually make proper Kakuros. It’s really helped in this instance. Though working on 2x2, 2x3 and 3x3 grids has really helped me understand the relationship between high and low clue values, it’s invaluable to be able to take an existing Kakuro structure and apply that design knowledge across the whole thing.
So in taking this blank structure I wanted to come at it with a couple of specific design values:
I wanted to focus on the central 5 cell clue being a maximum (so 35 as the clue needing 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9).
From there I wanted to figure out how to make those 3 and 4 cell clues which feed into that core 5 cell clue
Finally I wanted to understand how that can all cascade from the corners of the Kakuro in those 2x2 and 2x3 segments.
Because the puzzle is made from those tight 2 and 3 cell clue structures it was actually quite simple to take a corner and constrain the solutions so the player could start from anywhere and contribute towards getting the 35 clue filled up in the middle.
So I started with this corner in the bottom right. I was interested in that intersection between the 35 clue and the 4 cell that goes downward into that corner. I liked the idea of the maximum 35 clue being affected by a 4 cell minimum clue. So I initially thought of a 10 but that wouldn’t work because it’s 1, 2, 3, 4. So I moved it one up to an 11 which immediately allows the player to place the 5 in the 35 clue.
The rest of this corner piece is then just working with small clues to give the player a simple way in. The 4/3 clue intersection is pretty basic in forcing a 3 into the 4 cell 11 clue and from that the rest of the corner cascades pretty quickly. (I always like using a 3 cell 7 clue though)
With this corner I wanted to offer some contrast to the low numbers being used in the bottom right corner whilst still affording the player a way in. The 8 clue plays a big role in disambiguating the 16 which pretty much collapses that corner. But it does get interesting when this corner starts to move into the central 35 clue. I hadn’t placed the 6 or 18 but what I wanted was for this central area to be teased out when the player works on the opposing corner in the top right. I think I need more testing to see if that succeeded. but it’s an interesting design concept I want to work on further
The other corners follow a similar sort of structure in having low and high number clues in a 2x2 setting force individual solutions which cascades the rest of that section. I fully admit that this is a pretty simple Kakuro but I think I can allow myself some pride in how it’s come together and I’m encouraged to keep going forward and expand my knowledge of this format.
I think the way forward in making Kakuros for now is to keep copying new structure types into my graph paper and work on those. After that I can start to work on the crossword like structure of the format itself in these blog posts.
