Hidato ( he, חידאתו, originating from the Hebrew word ''Hida'' = Riddle), also known as "Hidoku", is a

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

puzzle game invented by Dr. Gyora M. Benedek, an Israeli mathematician. The goal of Hidato is to fill the grid with consecutive numbers that connect horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The name Hidato is a registered trademark of Doo-Bee Toys and Games LTD, a company co-founded by Benedek himself. Some publishers use different names for this puzzle such as Number Snake, Snakepit (both of which play on the game's similarity in concept to the video game ''

Snake Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more j ...

''), Jadium or Numbrix.

About the puzzle

In Hidato, a grid of cells is given. It is usually square-shaped, like

Sudoku Sudoku (; ja, 数独, sūdoku, digit-single; originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row ...

Kakuro Kakuro or Kakkuro or Kakoro ( ja, カックロ) is a kind of logic puzzle that is often referred to as a mathematical transliteration of the crossword. Kakuro puzzles are regular features in many math-and-logic puzzle publications across the worl ...

, but it can also include hexagons or any shape that forms a

tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety o ...

. It can have inner holes (like a disc), but it has to be made of only one piece. The goal is to fill the grid with a series of consecutive numbers adjacent to each other vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. In every Hidato puzzle the smallest and the highest numbers are given on the grid. There are also other given numbers on the grid (with values between the smallest and the highest) to help direct the player how to start the solution and to ensure that Hidato has a single solution. Note: the above condition on the smallest or highest numbers are sometimes relaxed: only their values can be given, without their positions on the grid (of course, the difference between these values must be equal to the number of cells in the grid minus one). This may lead to harder puzzles. Every well-formed Hidato puzzle is supposed to have a unique solution. Moreover, a Hidato puzzle intended for human solvers should have a solution that can be found by (more or less) simple logic. However, there exist very hard Hidato puzzles, even of small size.

Distribution

After Hidato publication, Numbrix puzzles, created by

Marilyn vos Savant Marilyn vos Savant (; born Marilyn Mach; August 11, 1946) is an American magazine columnist who has the highest recorded intelligence quotient (IQ) in the ''Guinness Book of Records'', a competitive category the publication has since retired. S ...

and appearing in most editions of the weekly magazine '' Parade'', are similar to Hidato except that diagonal moves are not allowed and that all puzzles are square in shape (vos Savant has only used 7×7 and 9×9 grids). Jadium puzzles (formerly ''Snakepit'' puzzles), created by Jeff Marchant, are a more difficult version of Numbrix with fewer given numbers and have appeared on the ''Parade'' web site regularly since 2014, along with a daily online version of Numbrix.

Solving techniques

As in many logic puzzles, the basic resolution technique consists of analyzing the possibilities for each number of being present in each cell. When a cell can contain only one number (Naked Single) or when a number has only one possible place (Hidden Single), it can be asserted as belonging to the solution. One key to the solution is, it does not have to be built in ascending (or descending) order; it can be built piecewise, with pieces starting from different givens. As in the Sudoku case, the resolution of harder Hidato or Numbrix puzzles requires the use of more complex techniques - in particular of various types of chain patterns.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Hidato official web siteHidato Android App
Puzzle video games Logic puzzles Israeli inventions