On a Complex KenKen Problem

Summary

In his popular blog, Brian Hayes presented a four-by-four KenKen puzzle over a set of complex numbers, mentioning that he had not checked the uniqueness of the solution. Here, we study all cage patterns over similar puzzles that allow for unique solutions and show that they are equivalent to Hayes's choice. We define a group action that preserves the size of solution sets and proceed to classify all puzzles with unique solutions before concluding with suggested activities and several open questions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Nacin

David Nacin ([email protected]) is a professor of mathematics at William Paterson University of New Jersey in Wayne. He enjoys designing and studying puzzles that take into account the structure of groups and Lie algebras, various partition identities, the motion of chess pieces, and sometimes other puzzles themselves.