If you like Sudoku, you'll love Trigons
They're made of triangles, they run on pure logic, and they are enormous fun. Each triangle shows you its centre number — the total of its three sides. The sides are blank, and working them out is the whole game.
No maths beyond adding up. No guessing needed, ever. Just that lovely feeling when a number clicks into place and three more suddenly become obvious. Fair warning: people who start one at breakfast have been known to still be at it by lunch.
No payment. No app to install. Just you and the numbers.
A bit of chess, a bit of crossword, a lot of fun
Trigon borrows something from every game worth playing. The deduction of Sudoku. The thinking-ahead of chess. The satisfying click of a crossword answer. The weighing-up of backgammon, and the shape-sense of Go.
- Logic
- Mental arithmetic
- Memory
- Pattern spotting
- Thinking ahead
- Patience
And because it's built on numbers, it doesn't care what language you speak or how old you are. A nine-year-old and a ninety-year-old can sit at the same table and both have a proper go.
You get the totals. You work out the rest.
Triangular dominoes are fitted together into a shape. Each triangle carries a number on all three sides and a centre number that adds them up.
You're handed every centre number and not one of the sides. Where two triangles meet they share a side, so the number is the same for both — crack one triangle and you've handed yourself a clue about its neighbour.
Start with the zero. A centre of 0 can only ever be 0+0+0. From there it's one deduction after another, all the way home.
Not one of these came out of a computer
Sudoku is generated by the million, at the press of a button, for nothing. Trigons are not. Every single one was worked out on paper, by hand, by a man called Alan Frazer Dackers — Dax to everyone who knew him, The Boffin to the rest.
He graded the difficulty of each one himself. He and Lester Jordan produced enough for a new book every month for thirty months.
puzzles, every one by hand
books
generated by computer
hours of mental exercise
Dax and Lester have both died. No new Trigon will ever be made. What you see here is the complete and final collection.
Read the whole storyGet a pencil. And a rubber.
This is a pencil-and-paper game and it's meant to stay that way. You'll change your mind, rub things out, and change them back. Everybody does — including the people who made them.
Every book comes as a PDF you download and print at home, as many times as you like. Print one page over breakfast, or the whole book for a holiday. Prefer a proper printed book on the shelf? Those are available too.
About sixty puzzles a book, with every answer in the back — so you're never truly stuck, only temporarily beaten.
Sixty books. Four sizes. One rule.
The 333 series is a coffee break. The 444, 555 and 666 get bigger, longer and considerably more stubborn. Every book mixes them up, easiest first.
Start now, for nothing
Three ways in, and two of them cost you absolutely nothing.
Today's puzzle
One puzzle a day, the same one for everybody, from the 333 series. Small enough for a coffee break. A fresh one at midnight.
A free book
Twelve puzzles across all four sizes, the solving guide, and every answer. Print it, sharpen something, begin.
The full collection
All sixty books. Every puzzle Dax ever made. The complete and final set, and there will never be another.
One free book, on its way
Leave your email and the sample book comes straight back. After that we'll only write when there's a new book or something worth solving. Stop it whenever you like.