How to Create Ikura Puzzles in Puzzle Maker Pro

Summary: Ikura has two settings, so most of your time goes on styling and output rather than configuration. This guide takes you from a single puzzle to a batched book with a difficulty gradient, in about ten minutes.

Overview

Ikura is the addition-only 3×3 cross sum: place 1 to 9 once each so every row and column hits its printed total. If you want to understand the puzzle itself first, read How Ikura Puzzles Work. This page is about producing it.

The module is deliberately narrow. You control how many digits are given, whether the digits still to place are listed beside the board, and how the puzzle looks. That is the whole configuration surface, which is why a book of Ikura puzzles is quick to build.

Required Modules

You need Puzzle Maker Pro with the Ikura module: Ikura.

Editions for this module. Lite creates Ikura puzzles and exports the static formats — JPG, PNG, SVG, print PDF and PowerPoint — and includes Instant Puzzle Books, a book PDF assembled straight from your current settings (margins, trim size, layout), every puzzle the same, with no extra book setup. Productivity adds Time Saver for batch creation and Puzzle Book Studio Productivity, which gives you full book editing across multiple puzzle collections combined into one book. Productivity Interactive adds this module’s interactive output: Puzzle Slides, online play and JSON export. See Puzzle Maker Pro Editions Explained.

Making books at volume? You want Productivity — that is the rung that adds batch creation.

Commercial rights. Lite and Productivity both carry the licence to sell the finished puzzle products you make — puzzle books, worksheets and printable packs — to your own readers and customers, on KDP, Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or your own store. Productivity adds the right to sell or supply the puzzles you generate to other publishers, businesses and sellers.

Preparation

Nothing to prepare. Ikura needs no word list, no images and no source content — the digits 1 to 9 are the whole content model. Open Puzzle Maker Pro and select Ikura from the Math category.

Choose How Many Digits Are Given

On the Main tab, set Given digits. This is the module’s difficulty control. It runs from 0 to 5, and the default is 4.

Fewer givens means a harder puzzle:

5 — the easiest setting. Four digits to place.
4 — the default, and the layout readers recognise from printed puzzle magazines. Five digits to place.
3 or 2 — harder. At two givens the solver has to open with pair sums rather than a single blank.
1 or 0 — the hardest boards the puzzle allows. Expect one or two givens back rather than none; treat 0 as “as few as this board allows”, not as a promise of an empty grid. Set 2 when you want reliably hard puzzles you can predict.

Two things to know about what comes back:

The count can go up, never down. You will never get fewer givens than you asked for. Where the number you asked for cannot pin a particular board to one solution, that board comes back with an extra digit revealed.

The givens land on a shape. At four givens they occupy either the four corners or the four edge centres; at five, the corners plus the centre. Expect the magazine-style layout readers know, not scattered digits. Both four-given shapes are used, so your boards still vary.

Building just a few levels rather than a book? On Lite you set Given digits, generate that band, export it, then change the setting and run again. Three runs at 5, 4 and 2 give you an easy/medium/hard worksheet set without Time Saver. Use 2 rather than 3 for the hard band — three givens still prints as Medium.

Show or Hide the Digits Still to Place

Also on Main, Show digits still to place controls the discs beside the board listing the digits not yet printed — one column up to five digits, two columns above that. It is on by default.

This is a presentation choice, not a difficulty one — turning it off changes the look, not the puzzle. Toggle it either way with no other consequence for the printed page.

Leave it on for younger or more casual audiences, and for solvers who like to cross digits off. Turn it off for a tighter, more traditional look, or when you are fitting more puzzles onto a page.

If you sell the interactive output, switching the discs off moves where the tiles sit: Puzzle Slides puts them in the deck’s standard tile bank, and the web player shows them in a tray under the board. The tiles themselves are unchanged, so the puzzle plays the same.

Style the Puzzle

The Style tab controls the board’s colours and lines:

Canvas — the page background.
Answer circles and Answer circle outline — the fill and border of the nine circles.
Total boxes and Total box outline — the boxes holding the row and column totals.
Digits to place — the colour of the discs beside the board. The digits printed on them stay white, so they read against any disc colour you choose.
Answer digits and Totals — two font rows (family, size, colour). They share one underlying font, so a change to either applies to both.

Styling otherwise works the same way across every module; see How to Customize Puzzle Designs in Puzzle Maker Pro for the controls themselves. The Layout tab handles cropping, puzzle area and the per-collection Use branding toggle, again as it does everywhere else.

Set the Title

On the Layout tab, the title options print a heading on each puzzle. Smart Titles works the same way on every module — see How to Create Smart Puzzle Titles in Puzzle Maker Pro for the mechanism.

What is specific to Ikura is the list of options. At the default four givens they resolve like this:

Ikura — e.g. “Ikura”
Ikura Difficulty — e.g. “Ikura Medium”
Difficulty — e.g. “Medium”
Custom — your own text. This is the default, so the title stays blank until you type one.

The difficulty word comes from the given-digit count: five givens reads Easy, four or three reads Medium, two or fewer reads Hard. Four and three both read Medium, so if your book needs a distinct label per chapter, use Custom titles for those rows or pick counts that fall in different bands.

The same option list also feeds the Description field, which defaults to “Place the digits 1 to 9, each once, so every row and column adds up to its total.”

Generate and Export

Set Quantity in the header panel, then create the puzzles. Each puzzle comes with its solution. (The free demo and unlicensed tiers create one puzzle at a time.)

Export to JPG, PNG, SVG, print PDF or PowerPoint from Lite up. Productivity Interactive adds three more:

Puzzle Slides — a PowerPoint deck in which the digits still to place become number tiles the solver drags onto the discs.
Online play — exported HTML plus a ZIP for the BookPublisherTools WordPress plugin, so readers can play the set on your own site. See How to Play Puzzles Online for what that looks like to a solver.
JSON — the catalog format behind online play, exported per puzzle and per collection. Use it when you are publishing a playable set through the WordPress plugin.

Batch a Book’s Worth

With Productivity, use Time Saver to produce many puzzles at once: add an Ikura row, set its given digits and quantity, then add more rows for the other difficulties. Batch runs are de-duplicated, so a run of 100 gives you 100 distinct boards rather than repeats. See How to Batch Create Puzzles with Time Saver.

Build the difficulty gradient by adding rows. For a 100-puzzle book, that is four rows of 25 — set Given digits to 5, then 4, then 2, then 1, in that order. Each row is genuinely harder than the one before it.

One thing to plan around if you print the difficulty on the page: Ikura has three difficulty words, not four. Five givens reads Easy, four or three reads Medium, and two or fewer reads Hard — so any four-row stack repeats a word, and in the 5 / 4 / 2 / 1 order the last two rows both print Hard. If every chapter needs its own printed label, run three rows (5 / 4 / 2) or set Custom titles per row.

Skip Add Progression for Ikura — it does not apply to this module. Four rows is a minute’s work and gives you exact control over the gradient anyway.

From there, Puzzle Book Studio assembles the pages into a finished book.

Outcome

You have a set of Ikura puzzles with solutions, styled to your book and exported in the formats you need — and if you batched them, ordered from easiest to hardest across the volume.

FAQ

Which edition do I need to batch-create Ikura puzzles?

Productivity. It adds Time Saver for batch creation, and Puzzle Book Studio Productivity for assembling multiple collections into one book. Lite creates puzzles one run at a time and assembles with Instant Puzzle Books.

What formats can I export?

JPG, PNG, SVG, print PDF and PowerPoint at every edition. Productivity Interactive adds Puzzle Slides, online play and JSON.

Why did I get a puzzle with more given digits than I asked for?

Because the number you asked for could not pin that particular board to a single solution, so the generator revealed one more digit instead of publishing a puzzle with two valid answers. It happens most at zero and one given, and you will never get fewer than you asked for.

How do I make a book that gets harder as it goes?

Add one Time Saver row per difficulty band and order them highest given-count first — 5, then 4, then 2, then 1.

Do the puzzles repeat across a large batch?

No. A batch run de-duplicates as it goes, so each puzzle in the run is a distinct board.

Can I sell books made with Ikura?

Yes. Every edition, Lite included, carries the licence to sell the finished puzzle books, worksheets and printable packs you make. Productivity adds the right to sell or supply the generated puzzles themselves to other publishers and sellers.