The History of No Neighbors

A modern logic puzzle from Japan with one simple twist: equal digits keep their distance.

An Inventor's Puzzle

No Neighbors was invented by the Japanese puzzle designer Naoki Inaba, who published it in 2001. Inaba has created a great many logic puzzles, often built on a single clear rule that leads to surprisingly deep reasoning.

The puzzle combines two familiar ideas: regions that must each hold a fixed set of digits, as in Sudoku's boxes, and a neighbourhood rule borrowed from the king in chess - a digit may not repeat anywhere a king could step to.

Under Other Names

Outside Japan the puzzle appears under other names as well, for example as Suguru or as Tectonic. The rules are the same everywhere; PaperGames uses the inventor's original name.

Every puzzle here is created fresh on your device: blocks and a valid solution are built together cell by cell, then digits are removed one at a time for as long as a built-in solver still finds exactly one solution.

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