About KenKen's Creator, Tetsuya Miyamoto

About KenKen’s Creator, Tetsuya Miyamoto

Innovative math educator Tetsuya Miyamoto created KenKen so students could truly experience the joy of learning in his well-respected Miyamoto’s math classroom.

To ensure that the puzzles would be pleasing to his students he designed them with an eye toward aesthetics: Notice a certain amount of symmetry in many of the puzzles. Each grid contains enough clues to help you to solve the puzzle, but not so many as to make it easy. And, of course, every KENKEN puzzle has only one solution. His method is straightforward: Students spend 90 minutes every week solving puzzles on their own. They quickly learn that perseverance is a key to success!

Miyamoto isn’t selective about the students he teaches: all are welcome regardless of ability and admission is based solely on a first-come, first-served basis. But parents of Miyamoto’s students know he gets results. Fully 80% of the children who attend his weekly classes later gain admission to Japan’s most exclusive schools. And Miyamoto’s students routinely dominate Japan’s “Math Olympics," the country’s top mathematics competition for students ages 11 to 15.

Miyamoto is a much-in-demand lecturer, known for his credo, “The Art of Teaching Without Teaching.” He explains, “If you give children good educational materials, they will think, learn, and grow on their own. They work in the same way as babies who naturally learn to stand up and start walking without actually being taught.”