Word.ws English Dictionary

nurikabe

nurikabe noun: a Japanese logic puzzle with a rectangular grid of squares, some of them numbered; the solver is challenged to fill in a subset of squares (under certain constraints) such that each numbered square finally indicates the number of unfilled squares contiguous to it.

nurikabe: a Japanese logic puzzle with a rectangular grid of squares, some of them numbered; the solver is...
Image: Drostie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

nurikabe (uncountable)

  1. (puzzles) A Japanese logic puzzle with a rectangular grid of squares, some of them numbered; the solver is challenged to fill in a subset of squares (under certain constraints) such that each numbered square finally indicates the number of unfilled squares contiguous to it.

Origin of nurikabe

From Japanese ぬりかべ (nurikabe, “an invisible wall in Japanese folklore that blocks roads and delays travel on foot”).

Questions about nurikabe

What does nurikabe mean?
Nurikabe means a Japanese logic puzzle with a rectangular grid of squares, some of them numbered; the solver is challenged to fill in a subset of squares (under certain constraints) such that each numbered square finally indicates the number of unfilled squares contiguous to it.
What part of speech is nurikabe?
Nurikabe is a noun.

Words near nurikabe in the dictionary

  1. Nureyevian
  2. NURF
  3. nurhag
  4. nurhags
  5. Nuri
  6. nurikabe
  7. Nuristan
  8. Nuristani
  9. Nuristanis
  10. nurk
  11. nurks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nurikabe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “nurikabe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nurikabe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.