Kakuro Strategy
Here is our guide on how to go about successfully completing a Kakuro grid.
Below is an example grid. We've made this one nice and small to stop it being too daunting!
Strategy One
The first thing you should do is to look for lines with the fewest squares. In the puzzle above, therefore, you should try and get the answers to the lines with just two numbers before you tackle the one with four.
The reason is simple - there are less combinations and therefore more certainty with these smaller lines.
Strategy Two
Start with smaller numbers first. For the same reason as above, these will have less possible combinations. Therefore look at the 3's in the puzzle above before you look at the 6. After all, 6 can be composed of 2 | 4 or 4 | 2 or 5 | 1 or 1 | 5. Note that 3 | 3 is not valid as it repeats. 3 however can only be 2 | 1 or 1 | 2.
So, in the sample above, start with the '3' at the top of the cell containing the two threes. You can tell straight away that this must be 2 | 1.
This is because the second digit is part of the '4', but we know the four cannot have a 2 anywhere in it, as 2 | 2 is not valid. Therefore it must be 3 | 1 or 1 | 3. Well, the second digit making up a total of 3 cannot be 3 which is also invalid. Summary: the 3 must be 2 | 1 and the 4 must be 1 | 3. Write them in to get the position below:
Strategy Three
OK, so we've made good progress.
Now we can start to tackle the rest of the puzzle with this foundation. Let's look at the '10' row. We know that the other two cells must contain 2 | 4 or 4 | 2: those are the only ways to make 6 out of 2 cells.
Now, we know that the second cell contains two digits that make up 3. The only combinations are 2 | 1 and 1 | 2. Combining these, we see the common number between 1, 2, 4 is the 2, so therefore the shared cell must be 2. This tactic is known as the common number tactic.
Once that's sorted, we know the number to the left is a 4.
It is then trivial to write in the 2 and 1 on the bottom line, and the puzzle is solved:
