Number Grid
Medium
00:00
Classic
About medium number grids
Still 3×3, but now multiplication appears alongside addition and subtraction. The nine cells inside the grid still hold each of 1 to 9 exactly once — what changes is the arithmetic, not the pool — and you will see 4 to 6 blank cells. Totals grow quickly once a × lands in a row, but totals are not part of the pool.
Division here always divides evenly. If you try a number and it gives a fraction, that number is wrong. This rule is one of the most useful ways to narrow down possibilities. Also keep the order of operations in mind: 6 + 2 × 3 is 12, not 24 — the × is settled first. Students around grades 3–5 who know their times tables should find medium grids manageable.
How to play Number Grid
- Every row is an equation read left to right, and every column is one read top to bottom. Its answer sits at the end of the line — down the right-hand side, along the bottom.
- The arithmetic is the ordinary kind: × and ÷ are settled before + and −. So 2 + 3 × 4 is 14, not 20.
- Division always comes out exact. A value that would leave a fraction is the wrong value.
- The numbers you write INSIDE the grid come from a fixed pool, each used exactly once — the way a sudoku uses its digits. Easy and medium use 1 to 9, hard 1 to 16, expert 1 to 25, and einstein uses −12 to −1 and 1 to 24, with no zero.
- That pool is often the only thing that settles a cell. A blank whose row answer and column answer are both blank is pinned by nothing else — the arithmetic would take any number at all.
- The answers round the edge are NOT part of the pool. They are totals: whatever the arithmetic makes them, and they may repeat.
- From hard upward some of the round operation cells are blank too, so you work out the sign as well as the number.
- Every puzzle has one solution, reachable by logic alone.