QED Logic quod erat demonstrandum
Logic Ascent

How to solve this 8×8 logic puzzle

8×8 · gentle · 13 steps

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1
2
🐱
3
🐱
4🐱
5
🐱
🐱
6
7
🐱
8
🐱
🐱

This 8×8 board rates as gentle (difficulty score 777). Solving it from scratch takes 23 logical steps, using 6 techniques: Single cell, Row/column exclusion, Adjacency clear, Region confinement, Line confinement, Shape squeeze. Every step below is forced: nothing here is a guess.

  1. First, every open cell left in this region sits in column B, so its marker has to land there; that clears every other open cell in the column.
  2. Next, every open cell left in this region sits in column A, so its marker has to land there; that clears every other open cell in the column.
  3. Then, every open cell left in this region sits in column C, so its marker has to land there; that clears every other open cell in the column.
  4. After that, every open cell in row 1 belongs to the same region, so that region's marker has to be somewhere in this row; that clears every other open cell in the region.
  5. Now, place a marker at D2. Row 2 has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 2, column D, and its region. Placing here also clears its 2 touching neighbours.
  6. From there, place a marker at C4. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 4, column C, and its region. Placing here also clears its 1 touching neighbour.
  7. Following that, place a marker at G3. Row 3 has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 3, column G, and its region.
  8. First, place a marker at H8. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 8, column H, and its region.
  9. Next, place a marker at F1. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 1, column F, and its region.
  10. Then, every remaining candidate in this region touches B6, so whichever candidate ends up marked will clear it, and it can be ruled out now regardless of which one wins.
  11. After that, place a marker at B7. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 7, column B, and its region. Placing here also clears its 1 touching neighbour.
  12. Now, place a marker at A5. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 5, column A, and its region.
  13. 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. ∎