Three grids, three engines
Sudoku, KenKen, and cross-math share a look: numbers in a grid, solved by logic rather than luck. Underneath, though, each runs on a different rule, and that rule decides what the puzzle actually trains. Knowing the difference helps you bring the right instincts to each one.
Sudoku: placement without arithmetic
A Sudoku is a nine-by-nine grid divided into nine three-by-three boxes. You fill it so that every row, every column, and every box contains the digits one through nine exactly once. There is no addition or multiplication anywhere. The only rule is no repeats.
That makes Sudoku a puzzle of pure exclusion. You settle a cell by ruling out every digit that already appears in its row, its column, or its box, until one digit is left. It is wonderful logic training, but it involves no calculation at all — the digits could be any nine symbols.
KenKen: a Latin square with arithmetic cages
KenKen, also sold as Calcudoku or MathDoku, keeps Sudoku's backbone. You fill an n-by-n grid with the numbers one through n, once per row and once per column — a Latin square. Then it adds outlined groups of cells called cages, each labelled with a target and an operation, such as twelve-times or five-plus. The numbers inside a cage must reach that target using that operation.
So arithmetic enters the puzzle, but it works in service of the no-repeats rule. The cage maths narrows the candidates for a group of cells; the Latin-square constraint finishes the job. You are still, in the end, arranging each number once per line.
Cross-math: the equations are the puzzle
Cross-math, the family Lattice belongs to, drops the Latin square entirely. Numbers may repeat. There is no rule about what appears once per row or column. The constraints are the equations themselves: chains of cells joined by plus, minus, times, divide, and equals, all of which have to be true at the same time.
You place tiles from a tray — or, in some worlds, mint the values you need — so that every chain balances. The arithmetic is not a hint pointing toward a placement rule, the way it is in KenKen. In cross-math the arithmetic is the rule. Reading and satisfying equations is the entire game.
Where Lattice pulls ahead
Three things lift Lattice above both. First, every board is machine-proven to have exactly one solution before it ships, so you never have to guess and never hit a dead end — a guarantee hand-made puzzles elsewhere rarely make, and one that Sudoku and KenKen leave to the goodwill of the setter.
Second, difficulty is graded by how deep the deduction actually runs, not by how big the grid is, so an Easy board and a Master board are honestly labelled — you always know what you are signing up for. Third, the format does not sit still. It bends into twelve worlds: the classic cross, diagonal weaves, two-sided balances, inequalities, rings around a hub, dials you rotate, and boards wrapped on a 3D cube or pyramid. Sudoku and KenKen give you one fixed square, forever.
Why Lattice comes out ahead
Sudoku will always be the great pure-logic classic, and KenKen is a clever twist on it. But if what you love is the reasoning itself — numbers that must balance, a board you can always crack by thought alone, and the certainty that exactly one answer is waiting — that is precisely what Lattice is built for, and built to do better.
It is also built to keep giving: difficulty graded honestly by depth, a fresh proven puzzle every day, and twelve geometries that keep the challenge new long after a single square would have run dry. No guessing, no dead ends, no dark patterns. The classics stop at one board shape. Lattice keeps going — and it is free to start in your browser right now.