Introduction to KenKen®

Welcome to the Math Forum @ Drexel's KenKen® Puzzle collection! KenKen is a number puzzle that is related to Sudoku, but even more mathematical. To learn how to play the game, we recommend reading the rules and exploring tutorials that give some helpful tips and tricks.

KenKen and the Math Forum

The Math Forum is excited to partner with Nextoy® to offer a collection of KenKen puzzles to teachers and students. We have puzzles of many different sizes, four different difficulty levels, with many different combinations of arithmetic operations. We think there are KenKen puzzles accessible to our youngest visitors and challenging to the most seasoned KenKen veterans.

We are excited to offer KenKen puzzles because we enjoy them and we think they offer great opportunities to practice arithmetic skills in new and interesting ways, to learn and get better at problem-solving strategies, and to work on organizing and communicating mathematical ideas, which are some of our favorite things to do!

Using KenKen on the Math Forum

KenKen puzzles on the Math Forum are offered in the same format as our regular Problems of the Week. You can find all the puzzles at http://mathforum.org/kenken. The puzzles are organized by the operations used in the puzzle. Clicking on a type of puzzle will lead you to a grid of puzzles organized by size and difficulty. Any link within that grid will take you to a list of puzzles of that size and difficulty level for the operations you selected.

Clicking the name of a puzzle will take you to that puzzle, where you can access a link to a printable view, the puzzle's solution (if you are a teacher), and an option to submit your answer to the puzzle. Teachers can then view students' work on KenKen puzzles, the way they can view students' work if their class has a PoW membership.

Other Resources

With Nextoy®, we are pleased to offer a collection of lesson plans around implementing KenKen puzzles in the classroom. In addition, we are looking forward to developing some PoWs focused on the mathematics and problem-solving behind KenKen, that student KenKen enthusiasts can use to sharpen their skills and practice their mathematical communication.