Futoshiki Puzzle Book

Introduction
Futoshiki is a Japanese game of inequality, where greater than and less than signs are the main clues. Like Sudoku, each digit must appear once in every single row and column. So with a 4x4 puzzle, each row and column will contain the digits 1,2,3 and 4. Whilst the smaller puzzles are easy, larger ones will be a real test of your deductive powers. To get started, let's look at a simple example:

To begin with we can see that row 3 already has one number, 2, and that the top cell is greater than the cell below it. We know the remaining numbers in the row are 1 and 3, so 3 must be in the top cell and 1 below it.

It's now straightforward to complete the puzzle by filling in the remaining cells.

A Full Sized Game

Now let's look at a full sized 5x5 puzzle:

Begin by making pencil marks for each cell, showing all the possible numbers. If a cell is less than a neighbour, all possible values must be less than that neighbour, and the cell cannot contain a 5, as the neighbour could not hold a 6.

For the first two cells, we can see they are less than their neighbours to the right. So we can write in the pencil marks 1,2,3 2,3,4 and 3,4,5. Now let's fill in the pencil marks for the first 2 rows:

Once you've filled in the pencil marks, look through each row and column to see if any numbers are unique. On the first row, 1 can only be placed in the first cell, so it must be the cell value. Now fill in the 1, and remove 1 from all the other cells in the first row.

Having filled in all the pencil marks, we can see a number of cells with only a single value. Let's fill those in and remove the values from the rows and columns they're in:

Now look through to see what else can be deduced. In the first row, cell 3 must be greater than the 4 to it's right, so it must contain a 5. After filling that in, we can see the only place a 5 can go in the rightmost column.

Now update the pencil marks to take account of the new values. The 2 remaining 5s can be written in.

Now the 4s in the second and fourth rows can be written down.

From here we can write down the remaining values.

Larger puzzles call for more advanced techniques, such as removing pairs of numbers Good luck!

Puzzle #1

Puzzle #2

Puzzle #3

Puzzle #4

Puzzle #5

10

Puzzle #6

11

Puzzle #7

12

Puzzle #8

13

Puzzle #9

14

Solutions
Solution #1 2 1 3 4 4 3 1 2 3 2 4 1 1 4 2 3 4 2 1 3 Solution #2

Puzzle #10
1 4 2 4 3 1

3 2 4

2 1354 54132 43521 32415 15243 Solution #7 6 34512 361245 412356 145623 256134 Solution #10 52 31 456 6 72 31 4 3465271 1243756 7132645 2354167 4576312 5617423

Solution #4

2 3541 34152 45213 51324 12435 Solution #8 5 24163 362541 413652 251436 146325 635214

Solution #5

5 1423 23145 45312 34251 12534 Solution #6 5 1432 12543 45321 34215 23154 Solution #9 2 4 3 1 56 4 6 5 3 12 1 3 2 6 45 5 1 6 4 23 6 2 1 5 34 3 5 4 2 61

Solution #3

15 16