Sea Battle Puzzles for Kids: Getting Started, With a Printable Sample

Sea Battle for kids is a good fit for children who like boats, mazes or colouring inside lines: the puzzle is about where ships can and cannot go. You find a hidden fleet using numbers, with no guessing and no reading. This page says what a child needs to know, what LogikLand actually offers for young solvers, and how to teach the first grid in four steps with a small practice grid you can print.

Is Sea Battle a puzzle for kids?

Three skills carry the puzzle. The first is counting the ship squares in a row or a column and comparing the count with the number beside it. The second is remembering that ships never touch, even at a corner, which gives you the water around every ship. The third is reading the shape of a ship piece: a round end tells you which way the ship goes. None of this needs more than counting up to 6, and the pieces are drawn as pictures.

What LogikLand offers

Let us be exact. LogikLand has no separate children's edition of Sea Battle. The Kids tab of the dashboard contains Sudoku, Word Search, Mazes, Crossword and a mixed activity book, and Sea Battle is in the main list. It has an Easy level that suits a first try: a 6 x 6 grid and six ships, one of three squares, two of two and three single squares, with the most given squares of any level and mostly pieces of ship. The fleet is drawn under the grid, so a child can cross off each ship as it is placed.

Teaching it in four steps

Begin with a smaller grid than the real ones. This 5 x 5 practice grid has four ships: two of two squares and two single squares. We made it for this page with a short program that follows the Easy level's method, and checked that it can be solved without any guess. The solution is shown next to it.

Step 1: read the pieces

Two squares are given. The round square in row 3, column 1 is a ship of one square. The rounded end in row 1, column 2 has its round side on the left, so the ship goes to the right: row 1 column 3 is a ship square too. Rows are counted from the top and columns from the left. Row 1 shows 2, so that ship of two is complete.

Step 2: lines with 0, and the water around ships

Row 2 and column 5 show 0, so they are water all the way. Then ask the child what must be around each ship: the squares next to it and the corners are all water.

Step 3: a column that needs its ships

Column 1 shows 2. It already has the round ship in row 3, and every other square in it is water except row 5. So row 5, column 1 is the second ship square, and it is a single ship.

Step 4: finish with the last column

Column 4 shows 2. Its squares in rows 1, 2 and 5 are water, so the two ship squares are in rows 3 and 4. Together they are a ship of two standing upright. The whole fleet is placed: two ships of two and two single squares.

A first real grid

When the practice grid feels easy, move on to a real Easy grid from the LogikLand generator (6 x 6, six ships). It is also on page 1 of the printable PDF, with the solution on page 2.

The method is the same, with more squares. It is explained step by step in how to solve a Sea Battle puzzle, and you can print more Easy grids from our printable easy Sea Battle puzzles.

How to help without solving it for them

• Ask "which line shows 0?" before anything else. Water is the easiest thing to place.
• Let the child draw the water around each ship. Forgetting the corners is the usual reason a grid goes wrong.
• Use the fleet under the grid as a game: colour or cross off each ship once it is placed.
• Use a pencil and an eraser, and look together at the numbers when something does not add up.

Making a book for young solvers

To make a whole book of Easy grids, create a free account and open the Sea Battle assistant. Choose the Easy level, a page size of 8.5 x 11 or 6 x 9 inches, and one or two puzzles per page: with the fleet drawn under each grid, the assistant allows at most two. Our suggestion, not a rule: one puzzle per page keeps the squares large for small hands. The book can be made in English, French, Spanish, German or Italian; the grids stay the same and the title and how-to page change language.

Questions