is a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

teacher who invented the numerical logic puzzle

KenKen KenKen and KenDoku are trademarked names for a style of arithmetic and logic puzzle invented in 2004 by Japanese math teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto,

. (It is called ''Kashikoku-Naru-Puzzle'' in Japanese, which literally means "a puzzle that makes you smarter." It is also known as ''Keisan Block''.) Miyamoto developed KenKen in 2003 to help his students improve their calculation skills, logical thinking and patience. His puzzle series has sold over 1.5 million copies in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It was introduced to the rest of the world at the 2007

Bologna Book Fair The Bologna Children's Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children's books in the world. Since 1963, it is held yearly for four days in March or April in Bologna, Italy. It is the meeting place for al ...

as KenKen and has been translated into

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places *Czech, ...

, Mandarin Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Slovene, Spanish, Portuguese, and Icelandic. KenKen made its debut in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' (

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

) in March 2008, and the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' in February 2009. The first U.S. KenKen tournament was held in March 2009 in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, with Miyamoto in attendance. Miyamoto graduated from

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. He worked as an instructor at a ''

juku ''Gakushū juku'' ( ja, 学習塾; see cram school) are private, fee-paying schools that offer supplementary classes often in preparation for key school and university entrance exams. The term is primarily used to characterize such schools in ...

'' (university preparatory cramming school) in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

. In 1993 he founded his own school named ''Miyamoto Sansuu Kyoushitsu'' (Miyamoto Math Classroom) in Yokohama, and established his unique "non-teaching classroom" methodology called "The Art of Teaching Without Teaching". He moved his classroom to Tokyo (near Tokyo station) in 2009, and moved his classroom to Manhattan in 2015. His Manhattan class is named ''Miyamoto Mathematics Inc''. He currently spends 8 months in New York and 4 months in Japan. He teaches KenKen to children on weekends. He wrote over 180 books in Japanese, including his teaching methodology book called "''Kyouikuron''" that has been sold over 100,000 copies and the "''Kashikoku-Naru-Sansuu''" series that is consist of 96 math problem books that scaffold gradually.

References

External links

KenKen Web

Kenken.com

Time Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Mar ...

, March 2, 2009
Miyamoto Mathematics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Miyamoto, Tetsuya 20th-century Japanese mathematicians 21st-century Japanese mathematicians Living people Puzzle designers 1959 births Waseda University alumni ja:賢くなるパズル