Battleships Help

Rules / Objectives Summary

• You have to find all of the hidden ships.
• The numbers across the top and down the side tell you how many ship pieces are in the respective row/column.
• The small ships across the top tell you which ships are hidden in the grid.
• A ship can only be found horizontally or vertically.
• Ships are never adjacent to each other, neither vertically, horizontally, nor diagonally.

See the Basic Ideas, Walkthrough and Advanced Ideas for extra tips and tricks.

What are the numbers for? The numbers show you how many ship pieces appear in each row/column. Move your mouse over the puzzle to see the answer. Above each puzzle is a list of ships that are hidden in the grid.

Basic Ideas

• Ships are not allowed to touch, in any direction, so placing a ship piece will force other squares to be water.
  
• The system will automatically update a ship with the correct pieces once it can determine its length.
  

Walkthrough

	Step 1 This is the start of the puzzle. Solve this puzzle for yourself at the same time.
	Step 2 This row and column both have 0 as their clue, so these squares must be water.
	Step 3 These squares must be water as we have the top of a ship next to them, and separate ships are not allowed to touch.
	Step 4 This square must be part of the ship we were given at the start, but we do not yet know how long it is.
	Step 5 Placing the ship piece in Step 4 forces this square to be water (as ships do not touch).
	Step 6 These squares must all be ship pieces to satisfy the row clue of 4.
	Step 7 These squares must all be water to satisfy the respective row and column clues.
	Step 8 These squares are all ship pieces to satisfy the respective row and column clues.
	Step 9 These squares must be water, as ship pieces are not allowed to touch diagonally.
	Step 10 These squares are all ship pieces to satisfy the respective row and column clues.
	Step 11 This square is water, and the puzzle completes.
	Step 12 The completed puzzle.

Advanced Ideas

• In this example we have run out of ships of size 3, so this square must be water, completing the ship to its left.
  
• In this example we don't have any ships longer than 3, therefore this square is water.
  
• In this example we don't have any ships left of length 2, and it can't be length 3, so it must be length 1, so this square must be water.
  
• In this example we only have one place that we can fit a ship of length 3, so this square is a ship piece.