Futoshiki Online
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What Is Futoshiki?
Futoshiki is a Japanese logic puzzle whose name means "unequal" — and inequality is the whole game. Like sudoku, you fill a grid so every row and column contains each number exactly once. Unlike sudoku, there are no 3×3 boxes. Instead, the grid is peppered with < and > signs between neighbouring cells, and those comparisons are what crack the puzzle open.
Futoshiki Rules: How the < > Signs Work
- Fill the grid with 1 to N: no repeats in any row or column.
- A sign between two cells points at the larger number — in 3 < 5 the point faces the 5. The same reading works vertically: a sign pointing down means the lower cell is bigger.
- Signs are fixed clues — they never change, and every cell must respect all of them.
- Some cells come pre-filled as anchors; tap a cell and tap a number to fill the rest.
How to Solve a Futoshiki Puzzle (Strategy)
Start with the extremes. In any row, a cell marked with two signs pointing away from it must be either 1 or N — a tiny fact with big consequences. Combine signs with the no-repeat rule: if a row already holds 5 and 6, a ">" pointing at an empty cell from those neighbours shrinks its candidates immediately. Work pencil-mark style through what each cell could be, and promote a value the moment it has only one home in a line. Genuine futoshiki puzzles — like every one generated here — are solvable by pure deduction, never by guessing.
Futoshiki vs Sudoku
The two puzzles share the Latin-square skeleton — every row and column holds 1 to N exactly once — but they train different instincts. Sudoku chunks the grid into boxes and rewards scanning; futoshiki drops the boxes and replaces them with adjacent-cell comparisons, so it plays faster and fits smaller grids — a 5×5 futoshiki is a perfect coffee-break deduction. If sudoku's arithmetic-free logic is your thing, futoshiki is its quicker, spikier sibling.
More Free Logic Puzzles
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