Printable Futoshiki

Pick a size, a level and how many, and print. The grids go on one set of pages and the answers on another, so a sheet cannot spoil itself.

What lands in the paper tray

Six grids to a batch by default, two across a page, at a scale that leaves room to write four or five small digits into a cell — which on paper is not a luxury. A futoshiki printed at the size a sudoku is usually printed at is a futoshiki you cannot keep pencil marks in, and without pencil marks the puzzle is a memory test.

Nothing on the page is an image. Each grid is drawn as ordinary markup by the same renderer that draws the one you play on, so it comes out at whatever resolution the printer runs at rather than turning into a grey approximation. The signs are real characters printed on the cell borders, which means they stay crisp at any scale and stay black rather than fading into a rule line.

The interface, the navigation and the controls are removed from the printed output entirely rather than hidden. A hidden element still occupies space and still paginates, which is how a one-page sheet becomes one page of puzzles followed by three blank ones — the commonest thing wrong with printable puzzles online, and worth naming because it is so easy to ship without noticing.

Which size and which level suit paper

For a classroom, 4×4 or 5×5 on easy is almost always right. A 4×4 fits twelve to a double-sided sheet, takes a couple of minutes, and needs only two ideas — read the signs, then cross the settled numbers out of their rows and columns — which can be explained in about a minute or handed over as the technique pages instead.

For a long journey, 7×7 at medium or hard is the sweet spot. Big enough to take real time, small enough that keeping your place is not itself the challenge, and at those levels the grid keeps producing without demanding a written candidate list in every single cell.

Print 8×8 and 9×9 at easy or medium rather than expert unless you enjoy bookkeeping. A 9×9 expert is generated honestly and is a genuinely fine puzzle, but eighty-one cells of pencil marks maintained by hand is an exercise in neatness as much as in reasoning, and the same argument on a 6×6 is just as interesting and half the writing.

Printed grids are proved like every other

Printed grids come from the same generator as the ones on screen and are held to the same standard: exactly one arrangement satisfies the rules, and it is reachable by argument at the level printed on the sheet. There is no second, sloppier path for paper.

That matters more on paper than anywhere else, because paper has no undo. A printed grid with two answers wastes an afternoon and gives you no way to discover that the grid was at fault rather than you. It is also why the answer pages are printed by default rather than offered as an extra.

Common questions

More Futoshiki pages

• Futoshiki puzzleUnlimited grids
• Daily futoshikiA new grid every day
• Futoshiki rulesThree rules, in full
• Solving a gridA 5×5, worked
• Futoshiki techniquesThe whole ladder
• Sign chainsTechnique — the opening
• The line sweepTechnique — easy
• Only one homeTechnique — medium
• Sign boundsTechnique — hard
• Pairs and setsTechnique — expert
• Guessing at futoshikiTechnique — refused
• Futoshiki archiveEvery past grid