QED Logic quod erat demonstrandum
Logic Ascent

How to solve this 8×8 logic puzzle

8×8 · gentle · 10 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 435). Solving it from scratch takes 19 logical steps, using 4 techniques: Single cell, Row/column exclusion, Adjacency clear, Region confinement. Every step below is forced: nothing here is a guess.

  1. First, place a marker at G1. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 1, column G, and its region. Placing here also clears its 2 touching neighbours.
  2. Next, place a marker at H3. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 3, column H, and its region.
  3. Then, every open cell left in this region sits in row 2, so its marker has to land there; that clears every other open cell in the row.
  4. After that, every open cell left in this region sits in row 8, so its marker has to land there; that clears every other open cell in the row.
  5. Now, 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 2 touching neighbours.
  6. From there, 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.
  7. Following that, place a marker at C4. Column 3 has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 4, column C, and its region.
  8. First, place a marker at F6. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 6, column F, and its region.
  9. Next, place a marker at E8. Region has exactly one open cell left. Placing here clears the rest of row 8, column E, and its region.
  10. Finally, place a marker at D2. Region has exactly one open cell left.

The key move here was Region confinement. Once you can spot that, this board falls quickly.