Futoshiki Puzzle Books

Futoshiki is a logic puzzle from Japan whose name means "inequality". You fill a square grid so that every row and every column holds each number once, from 1 up to the size of the grid. There are no boxes. Instead, some neighbouring squares have a greater-than or less-than sign between them, and every sign must be true.

The rules take a minute to learn, but the logic runs surprisingly deep. A square with a sign pointing away from it on both sides can't hold the smallest number; a chain of signs can rule out several values at once. As the puzzles get harder, you'll find yourself following those chains across the grid and combining them with the row and column techniques you know from Sudoku.

Futoshiki has also appeared as "More or Less" and "Inequality", and it's a favourite with solvers who like pure logic with no arithmetic at all. There are no sums to do, only comparisons. Many solvers like to pencil in the values each square could still take, then cross them off as the signs and the rows and columns rule them out.

We publish three Futoshiki series. 600 Futoshiki has 600 puzzles per book in three rising levels, from Easy to Hard up to Hard to Extreme, so you can move up a book as your skills grow. Hard Core Futoshiki 400 is for experienced solvers: 400 hard puzzles that reward careful chains of reasoning. 157 Large Print Futoshiki puts one puzzle on every page in big print, so the signs are easy to read, in Novice, Adept and Master editions.

Each series page below explains what's inside, the levels on offer and who the books suit, so you can compare them quickly. If you're new to the puzzle, or stuck on a hard one, our guide to solving Futoshiki works through the techniques with worked examples, from the smallest and largest values to ruling out extremes and following chains of signs.