How to solve this 6×6 logic puzzle
A
B
C
D
E
F
1
2
3
4
5
6
1
🐱
2
3🐱
4
5
🐱
🐱
🐱
6
🐱
This 6×6 board rates as gentle (difficulty score 761). Solving it from scratch takes 17 logical steps, using 5 techniques: Single cell, Row/column exclusion, Adjacency clear, Region confinement, Shape squeeze. Every step below is forced: nothing here is a guess.
- First, place a marker at A2. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 2, column A, and its region. Placing here also clears its 2 touching neighbours.
- Next, place a marker at B5. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 5, column B, and its region. Placing here also clears its 2 touching neighbours.
- Then, every open cell left in this region sits in row 1, so its marker has to land there; that clears every other open cell in the row.
- After that, every open cell left in this region sits in row 3, so its marker has to land there; that clears every other open cell in the row.
- Now, place a marker at C1. Column 3 has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 1, column C, and its region.
- From there, every open cell left in this region sits in row 6, so its marker has to land there; that clears every other open cell in the row.
- Following that, every remaining candidate in this region touches E4 and F4, so whichever candidate ends up marked will clear them, and they can be ruled out now regardless of which one wins.
- First, place a marker at D4. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 4, column D, and its region. Placing here also clears its 1 touching neighbour.
- Next, place a marker at F3. Region has exactly one open cell left.
- Finally, place a marker at E6. Region has exactly one open cell left.
The key move here was Shape squeeze. Once you can spot that, this board falls quickly. ∎