Sea Battle Puzzle Rules: How to Play (Printable Example)

A Sea Battle puzzle hides a fleet of ships in a grid. You never fire a shot: you find every ship by reasoning, using the numbers around the grid and a few squares that are already given. The Sea Battle puzzle rules are quick to learn, and this page walks through them, explains each symbol, and solves the first moves of a real Easy grid.

What a Sea Battle puzzle is

The grid is square. Next to each row and under each column there is a number. Under the grid, a small picture lists the ships you have to find: bars of different lengths and round one-square ships. Your job is to place the whole fleet so that every number is respected. When you finish, the ships you drew are the only possible arrangement.

The rules

1. The fleet to find is drawn under the grid. Place every ship of it.
2. A ship is a straight line of squares, across or down. A one-square ship is a single round square.
3. The number at the end of a row, or under a column, tells how many squares of that line are taken by ships.
4. Two ships never touch, not even at a corner. Every square around a ship is water.
5. Some squares are given. They show water, or a piece of ship that helps you find the rest.
6. The grid has one solution, found by logic. You never have to guess.

The symbols on the grid

The given squares are printed in black. There are four kinds of ship pieces, and one for water:

• A wave is a square of water.
• A round square is a ship of one square. All its neighbours, including the diagonals, are water.
• A rounded end is the end of a ship. The round side shows where the ship stops: the ship continues on the flat side, and the squares at the sides of the end are water.
• A square piece is a middle square. The ship passes through it, so squares on both sides of it along the ship are ship squares.

While you solve, put a small dot or wave in the squares you know are water and fill in the squares you know are ship. On the solution page of a LogikLand book, the ships are drawn in dark grey and the given squares stay black.

A worked example

This Easy puzzle is made by the LogikLand generator. The grid is 6 x 6 and the fleet is six ships: one of three squares, two of two, and three single squares. The solution is next to it.

The first moves

Rows are counted from the top and columns from the left.

1. Rows with 0. Rows 2, 3 and 5 show 0, so they hold no ship at all. Mark water in every square of those rows.
2. Row 4. It shows 5, and four of its squares are already given: a middle square in column 2, the end of a ship in column 3 and a two-square ship in columns 5 and 6. Four ship squares are known. Column 4 is water, because it lies just beyond the end of the ship in column 3, so only one square of the row is open, column 1. The row needs 5, so column 1 is a ship square. The three squares of columns 1 to 3 form the ship of three.
3. Column 6. It shows 3. One ship square is known (row 4). Rows 2, 3 and 5 are water, so the two other ship squares can only be in rows 1 and 6. Each of them ends up as a one-square ship.
4. Columns 3 and 5. Each shows 1, and each already has its ship square in row 4. Every other square of those columns is water.

From there the ship list does the rest: the last two-square ship has only one place left, in the top left corner, and the last single ship ends up in the bottom row. The method is described in more detail in how to solve a Sea Battle puzzle.

The four levels

Common mistakes

• Letting two ships touch at a corner. This is the rule people forget most often.
• Reading a number as the number of ships. It counts squares, so a ship of three squares counts as 3 in its row.
• Forgetting to cross off a ship from the fleet once you have placed it. The fleet list is what settles the last squares.
• Treating a rounded end as a one-square ship. A round ship is a full circle; an end is half round, half flat.

Making a book of Sea Battle puzzles

LogikLand has no free single-puzzle tool for Sea Battle. Create a free account and open the Sea Battle assistant. You choose the level or levels, the page size (8.5 x 11 or 6 x 9 inches) and how many solutions go on a page. Because the fleet is drawn under each grid, a page holds one or two puzzles. A free account can make books of up to 50 pages, and commercial rights come with the PRO and EXPERT plans; see the pricing page.

Questions