Box and numbers game?

Question

In high school a friend taught me this kinda like a math game where let's say you have a square with 9 boxes in them. There is a way where you can number the boxes 1-9 in a pattern. Then when you add them up the sum is all the same on all sides. I forgot how to do it. No matter how large the box is, if you do it right it will still add up to the same amount. Anyone know how to do it?

It's not Sudoku because you can even have more than 9 boxes. You can even have up to a 1000 boxes or more. The whole point is to fill in the boxes from 1 to whatever many boxes you have and at the end the sum of all rows/columns will add up to the same number.

Answer 1

You're thinking of a magic square. Indeed, there exists at least one such square for a square of any size except for 2x2. For an nxn square, you place the first n^2 positive integers in different squares and try to get every row and every column to have the same sum. That sum will always be 0.5 * (n^3 + n).

Answer 2

if it's a Sudoku Puzzle it is a game of Trial and Error, there is no specific way to solve it.

Answer 3

I think you might b talking about sudoku

Answer 4

Yes, you are looking for the magic square, as the previous person--DavidK93--said.