# Kakuro u — Classic Math Logic Puzzle Game > A powerful and feature-rich mobile Kakuro (cross sums) logic puzzle game. (iPhone/iPad app by The Chess Solitaire Sudoku Factory Ltd.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kakuro-u/id306200861 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [The Chess Solitaire Sudoku Factory Ltd](https://appshunter.io/developer/994180799) - Category: Games, Education, Puzzle, Word - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Rating: 4.60/5 from 299 App Store ratings · 132 written reviews indexed - Age rating: 17+ - Requires: iOS 14.1 · 168 MB - Languages: American English, Dutch, French (France), German (Germany), Italian, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmål, European Portuguese, Russian, Chinese (Simplified, China) and 4 more - Released: 2009-04-23 - Data updated: 2026-08-27 - Monetization: free with in-app purchases - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kakuro-u/id306200861/reviews.md ## What is Kakuro u? The most powerful and feature rich mobile Kakuro game available. (Smartphone Magazine - Best Number Puzzle Game Winner 2007, 2008) Ready for a new challenge? Kakuro, also known as cross sums, is similar to Sudoku but with an additional twist. It is the latest craze to come from the land of the rising sun. Infact it's a bigger hit in Japan than SuDoku ! Similar rules and just as addictive... V3 Features a Brand New Puzzle Generator - All puzzles guaranteed to be solvable by logic alone. Kakuro is our mathematics and logic puzzle game that includes many unique features. Ideal for daily brain training or relaxation. "As the Kakuro puzzles get more advanced, the Mastersoft tools supplied are extremely clever and really help. If you like logic puzzles, I recommend Mastersoft’s ingenious implementation of this game." - Smartphone Magazine Features: Unlimited kakuros. * Many Unique Mastersoft Features including the ability to set bookmarks (or flags) during the game, which allows you to explore possible solutions and quickly get back to a known starting point if it doesn't work out using the 'Ball of String' function. Includes a uniques 'combo calcuator' which quickly shows you potential number combinations for each sequence in the puzzle. Ball of String, Flag Trail, combo calc and more ... Work your way up from Beginner to Kakuro Master ! Cool scoring system. Easily the most powerful Kakuro / Cross Sums game for iPhone. Enter your working out. Choose from a full pallette to color code your entries which with multiple undos makes it easy to try different solution strategies.. Various types of hint such including: 1. Naked Singles 2. Unique Combos 3. Suggest a Cell 4. Suggest a value and many more ... Six levels of difficulty from 'Simple' to "Kakuro Master" . Six board sizes. Unique gameplay with increasing difficulty. Designed with the help of over 100 Kakuro Players. Plays the way you want it to ! Built in timer. Rating. Advanced statistics. and Lots, lots more! >- EULA Agreement: http://www.mastersoftmobilesolutions.com/eula.htm Privacy policy: http://www.mastersoftmobilesolutions.com/privacy.htm About our auto-renewal subscriptions: All subscriptions are related to our Kakuro Pro service. See "What's Included" for more details. Service prices depend on the length of service purchased as shown on the purchase buttons. You can currently subscribe for 1 month. Payment will be charged to your iTunes account upon confirmation of purchase. Your subscription will be automatically renewed unless automatic renewal is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period and the cost of renewal will be shown. You can manage your subscriptions, and auto-renewal can be turned off if you go to your account settings after purchase. ## Key features - Unlimited Kakuro puzzles - Puzzle generator - Bookmark and 'Ball of String' function - Combo calculator - Color-coded entries - Multiple hint types - Six difficulty levels and board sizes ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **Subscriptions** | Subscription | Price | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Monthly Pro Subscription | $1.99 | per month | **One-time purchases** | Purchase | Price | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | Purchase Kakuro Outright | $2.99 | one-time | ## What do users think of Kakuro u? Overall sentiment: negative **Pros** - 🚀 Glitchy but great - 👍 Love this game, keeps you thinking - 🚀 Good standards on games - 👍 Awesome game for any Kakuro fan - 👍 Addicting - 👍 Excellent, easy to pick up and play **Cons** - 🐛 Ruined by updates - 🐛 No hard levels - 🐛 Ruined by updates - 🐛 Can't even input numbers - 🐛 Broken - 🐛 Crashes too often - 🐛 Terrible presentation - 🐛 BAD Logic! **Commonly reported bugs** - Glitchy, crashes often - Doesn't work on iOS 8 - Doesn't work anymore after updates - Buttons don't respond - Loses progress when app is interrupted **Most requested features** - Easier way to mark the board and rewind to an earlier mark - Dark mode option - More hints for beginners ## Recent user reviews (10 of 132) All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kakuro-u/id306200861/reviews.md ### 4/5 — Glitchy but great *2025-05-31* I’m giving only 4 stars because… I’m not sure this game is even playable without a paid account at the moment, because of bugs in the way IAP and ads work. Which I know because my paid account somehow turned into a free one in a previous update. They manually restored it for me, which is very cool, but obviously it would be better if it didn’t happen in the first place. And there have been a few times over the many years where the game just didn’t work for months (e.g., way back when, IIRC, the iPhone 6 came out, it couldn’t handle the extra screen space and would crash if you clicked there). Of course most games from that long ago were just abandoned and won’t work on anything newer than iOS 9 or something, so not having this game for a few months every few years is not a huge tragedy by comparison. But once you get past that, it’s as great as it ever was, and miles ahead of any other Kakuro app I’ve found. It can generate puzzles that are genuinely difficult but not unsolvable—the only other apps that have any difficult puzzles have a small number (and often charge you for them) rather than an endless stream of new ones. And the whole UI is designed around assisting you in solving those difficult puzzles. It’s a little messy and maybe hard to figure out at first, and kind of ugly (and changes over the years have made it uglier). But as far as usability once you learn it, it’s amazing. Also, it doesn’t hide behind a bunch of irrelevant gamification features. There’s counts of how many games you’ve won and a few other little things, but no big 30-second celebration when you win or coins to grind for or cheats to ration or special event modes or any of that. If you enjoy Kakuro as a game you don’t need them, and if not, they won’t help, so this app doesn’t have them. **Developer response:** Thank you for such a thorough and in depth review. Whilst this app is no longer economically viable to develop, I will keep it working for many years to come if I can. ### 1/5 — Ruined by updates *2025-05-28* A previous update to this game has turned what was the best kakuro app for almost a decade into a borderline unplayable mess. And the next update took away features while changing nothing else. And the latest one makes it unplayable. You can’t even start a new game, because all the difficulty levels have weird labels about ads instead of being level numbers, and then, when selected, they each give some different error about some GDPR service. So, that’s that; I can’t play even if I wanted to. But I rarely wanted to anymore anyway, for quite some time. Here’s my review of the previous changes to explain why: First, the new color scheme and “flat” look is hideously ugly. It’s also less usable—a touch interface with tons of fiddly little buttons crammed onto the screen really needs visible borders. (Imagine the iPhone keyboard without the white squares around the keys.) Second, there’s now a banner ad on the bottom, right where you want to click to unselect the current selection. For a game that I paid for (even if the paid version was merged with the free version a few years ago), this is especially unacceptable. Third, it now randomly pops up intrusive ads. Worst of all, it keeps trying to get me to pay for a “Pro” upgrade. (I have no idea what’s included in “Pro”, but whatever it is, I haven’t needed it for the past decade.) It sometimes even spontaneously triggers a payment confirmation that I have to cancel. Presumably the interface tricked me into clicking a “Upgrade” button that appears under my finger when I’m trying to click something else, or something like that. But however they’re doing it, it’s not just seriously unethical, and annoying, but also a serious violation of Apple’s rules. So, what improvements do we get to compensate for all these downgrades? Not a single one of the features people had requested over the past decade (like an easier way to mark the board and rewind to an earlier mark) has been added. They did finally fix the bug where, on any screen bigger than an iPhone 4, there’s a dead space on the top and bottom that can crash the game if you accidentally click it. But because they filled that dead space with a banner ad that pops open an ad page in Safari if you accidentally click it, this isn’t really an improvement. I wish I could go back to the previous version. A new version came out at some point, and I upgraded hoping it would solve some of the problems. But I’ll never find out, because it disabled enough features that it’s not worth even trying. You can’t even start a game above medium difficulty anymore. So now, it’s gone from a game I pick up every once in a while when I’m not too annoyed to deal with the frustrations to one that I will never even think about playing. Nice job ruining it for good. **Developer response:** Hello, please email support@thechesssolitairesudokufactory.com so that we can get you back your paid for version. ### 5/5 — Kakura *2022-10-12* Love this game, keeps you thinking. ### 1/5 — No hard levels *2022-10-06* Please reinstate the harder levels !!! Better options out there if they are not re introduced ### 1/5 — Ruined by updates *2022-09-03* The previous update to this game has turned what was the best kakuro app for almost a decade into a borderline unplayable mess. And the latest update takes away features while changing nothing else. First, the new color scheme and “flat” look is hideously ugly. It’s also less usable—a touch interface with tons of fiddly little buttons crammed onto the screen really needs visible borders. (Imagine the iPhone keyboard without the white squares around the keys.) Second, there’s now a banner ad on the bottom, right where you want to click to unselect the current selection. For a game that I paid for (even if the paid version was merged with the free version a few years ago), this is especially unacceptable. Third, it now randomly pops up intrusive ads. Worst of all, it keeps trying to get me to pay for a “Pro” upgrade. (I have no idea what’s included in “Pro”, but whatever it is, I haven’t needed it for the past decade.) It sometimes even spontaneously triggers a payment confirmation that I have to cancel. Presumably the interface tricked me into clicking a “Upgrade” button that appears under my finger when I’m trying to click something else, or something like that. But however they’re doing it, it’s not just seriously unethical, and annoying, but also a serious violation of Apple’s rules. So, what improvements do we get to compensate for all these downgrades? Not a single one of the features people had requested over the past decade (like an easier way to mark the board and rewind to an earlier mark) has been added. They did finally fix the bug where, on any screen bigger than an iPhone 4, there’s a dead space on the top and bottom that can crash the game if you accidentally click it. But because they filled that dead space with a banner ad that pops open an ad page in Safari if you accidentally click it, this isn’t really an improvement. I wish I could go back to the previous version. A new version came out at some point, and I upgraded hoping it would solve some of the problems. But I’ll never find out, because it disabled enough features that it’s not worth even trying. You can’t even start a game above medium difficulty anymore. So now, it’s gone from a game I pick up every once in a while when I’m not too annoyed to deal with the frustrations to one that I will never even think about playing. Nice job ruining it for good. ### 2/5 — poor choice *2022-08-19* i have over 800 master puzzles solved and you lot cut me down to medium 8 - pathetic ### 5/5 — Best layout and dark mode! *2022-07-23* This is by far the best version and I have tried many! The layout and submenus are so user friendly. And for those of us who like playing at night before sleep it has the BEST dark mode, no more bright blinding background, that keeps you up! But a beautiful black background and dimmer lettering mode! To give a full review, there is one submenu where the “sliders” at the bottom are still messed up, but now that I know they actually DO read the reviews I am confident they will look into that too! Update: The developers got back to me and gave me back my paid version! Old review:Used to be the best, USED TO Now, even though I bought it way back when, it wants me to pay to upgrade so I can play the more difficult levels. I already paid. I will not pay again! I would rather find another to pay for than put up with that kind of deceit. ### 4/5 — Good game but no longer challenging! *2022-04-07* Really enjoy the game but since the new update I can only do up to medium level and I want to challenge myself more! Please bring back the higher levels! ### 2/5 — Levels *2022-04-07* I have been playing this for some time choosing the hard or very hard levels. For some reason, the highest level I can now play is medium. How do you get to play the higher levels ### 1/5 — Can’t even input numbers! *2022-02-06* And so clunky! Clumsy, badly thought out app. Pity as the game Kakuro is good on paper. **Developer response:** Hello, does this new version help? ## Frequently asked questions about Kakuro u ### What is Kakuro u? Kakuro u is a mathematics and logic puzzle game, also known as cross sums. It is similar to Sudoku but includes an additional twist. The app offers a powerful and feature-rich mobile experience for this classic puzzle. ### What are the key features of Kakuro u? Key features include unlimited puzzles, a unique puzzle generator, the ability to set bookmarks, a 'Ball of String' function for exploring solutions, a combo calculator, color-coded entries, multiple undo options, and various hint types. It also offers six difficulty levels and board sizes. ### How does the subscription work? Subscriptions are related to the Kakuro Pro service and offer access to additional features. Payments are charged to your iTunes account upon purchase, and subscriptions automatically renew unless turned off at least 24 hours before the current period ends. You can manage subscriptions in your account settings. ### What are the common use cases for Kakuro u? This app is ideal for daily brain training, offering a challenging mental workout. It can also be used for relaxation by engaging in a satisfying logic puzzle. Players can work their way up from beginner levels to become a Kakuro Master. ### Is Kakuro u compatible with my device? While specific compatibility details are not provided in the description, the app is designed for mobile devices, specifically mentioning iPhone. It's recommended to check the app store listing for precise device and operating system requirements. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 3.29.01 — 2026-03-15 Minor bug fixes. Updated SDK. ### 3.28.01 — 2025-07-30 Minor bug fixes. Updated SDK. New GDPR compliance updates. Improved privacy. ### 3.27.01 — 2025-07-03 Minor bug fixes. Updated SDK. New GDPR compliance updates. Improved privacy. ### 3.26.01 — 2025-06-10 Minor bug fixes. Updated SDK. New GDPR compliance updates. Improved privacy. ### 3.25.01 — 2025-06-05 Minor bug fixes. Updated SDK. New GDPR compliance updates. 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User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-27.*