Killer Uncaged

This puzzle will appeal to Killer Sudoku enthusiasts, as it’s a rather brilliant variant on that very popular Sudoku variant. Killer Uncaged takes away the very feature that Killer Sudoku added to Sudoku – the inner shapes (or cages) – leaving you with an almost blank grid and only the sum totals of where the cages once were. With one extra rule – there are no single-cell cages – Killer Uncaged gives you the additional challenge of recreating the puzzle, as well as solving it.

Puzzle enthusiast Jesse Campion Loth came up with the idea for this when he was just 15 years old and studying towards his GCSEs in 2011. He called the puzzle Killer Sudoku Plus. In his original version, cages were not allowed to go further left than their sum-cell, in the rows below the sum-cell. But cages in Killer Sudoku puzzles can be shaped like this, so we’ve amended this rule to create our own Killer Uncaged. These are, quite literally, uncaged Killer Sudoku puzzles.