[Tanniker Smith]

I've seen Cross Sums, but I never did them. I thought that they were like math crossword puzzles, which are usually bad. I didn't understand the rules.

A few weeks after the NY Daily News started running them in the Sunday comics I got hooked, after realizing that they were logic puzzles and not just a bunch of guess and check problems.

Will Shortz has a good history of Cross Sums in the intro of his Kakuro book.

[mathluv]

There are some math crossword puzzles in the books. I think they are called Figure Logic. I also like to do the math Bingo puzzles. There are usually on 2-4 per book.

I used some of the Cross Sum puzzles for extra credit years ago. It gave my students some basic math practice, and caused them to do some thinking.