An Orderly Constellation
February 27, 2025 2:08 PM Subscribe
Star Battle is a logic puzzle with simple rules: Place one star in each row, column, and shape. The stars must not touch.
Work your way up to 8x8 Hard Star Battles, then on to Two Star Battles, requiring two stars in every row, column, and shape.
If you want extra challenges, there's a daily giant Four Star Battle, as well as weekly and monthly special puzzles.
Part of Puzzle Team's effort to bring a wide variety of free logic puzzles to the web.
Work your way up to 8x8 Hard Star Battles, then on to Two Star Battles, requiring two stars in every row, column, and shape.
If you want extra challenges, there's a daily giant Four Star Battle, as well as weekly and monthly special puzzles.
Part of Puzzle Team's effort to bring a wide variety of free logic puzzles to the web.
I don't know if this tip will be helpful for anyone else, but I found that imagining the stars as a knight moving around a chessboard worked pretty well for me.
posted by box at 2:18 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]
posted by box at 2:18 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]
If you like these there is also Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection that runs on all kinds of platforms, is open source (MIT) and doesn't beg you to disable your adblocker.
posted by donio at 2:37 PM on February 27 [7 favorites]
posted by donio at 2:37 PM on February 27 [7 favorites]
I did one of these a few years ago when Will Shortz first put them in the NYT holiday puzzlemania and went on to lose many many hours to them.
Star Battle Go is a good app. It has a more limited selection but nicer phone interface
posted by little onion at 3:08 PM on February 27
Star Battle Go is a good app. It has a more limited selection but nicer phone interface
posted by little onion at 3:08 PM on February 27
AFAIK, the creator of Star Battle a/k/a Two Not Touch is Jim Bumgardner, a veteran computer programmer who has an interesting website with lots of free puzzles, as well as his other projects.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:38 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:38 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]
LinkedIn has this game as Queens, with pieces that look like chess queens, which confused me at first because they don’t actually behave like chess queens.
posted by smelendez at 5:02 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]
posted by smelendez at 5:02 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]
I think this game was making fun of me. I solved the first puzzle in about 2.5 minutes and it told me to submit my score to the Hall of Fame. Yeah, that wasn't sarcastic *at all*. Was this made by Dave Foley's sarcastic man character from KITH?
posted by NoMich at 6:04 PM on February 27
posted by NoMich at 6:04 PM on February 27
LinkedIn has this game as Queens, with pieces that look like chess queens, which confused me at first because they don’t actually behave like chess queens.
It's an interesting twist on the classic Eight Queens puzzle, where you can interpret their queen-like behavior being that none of them should be able to capture any of the others on the board.
I don't know if this tip will be helpful for anyone else, but I found that imagining the stars as a knight moving around a chessboard worked pretty well for me.
This is also a good insight, because it's knight-move translations (2 in one direction, 1 in the other) which is the closest two queens can get without being able to capture each other, and the puzzle boards are tight enough that the solution usually has several queens/stars being knight's-moves away from each other.
The easier puzzles have a clear place where the positioning of two zones let you induce that there's only one place to put a star in one zone because putting it in any other position makes the other zone uninhabitable. That gives you a place to start from and greatly simplifies the next step.
posted by notoriety public at 6:13 PM on February 27
It's an interesting twist on the classic Eight Queens puzzle, where you can interpret their queen-like behavior being that none of them should be able to capture any of the others on the board.
I don't know if this tip will be helpful for anyone else, but I found that imagining the stars as a knight moving around a chessboard worked pretty well for me.
This is also a good insight, because it's knight-move translations (2 in one direction, 1 in the other) which is the closest two queens can get without being able to capture each other, and the puzzle boards are tight enough that the solution usually has several queens/stars being knight's-moves away from each other.
The easier puzzles have a clear place where the positioning of two zones let you induce that there's only one place to put a star in one zone because putting it in any other position makes the other zone uninhabitable. That gives you a place to start from and greatly simplifies the next step.
posted by notoriety public at 6:13 PM on February 27
I visit this family of sites as my daily puzzle stop, and have for years and years. I play the special daily versions of battleships, light up, and hashi and occasionally binairo as well. The minesweeper is an interesting variant of what i'd call "normal" minesweeper. Stitches is an interesting challenge, too.
posted by maxwelton at 3:00 AM on February 28
posted by maxwelton at 3:00 AM on February 28
I’m playing a 10x10 hard puzzle with my coffee right now!
The Krazy Dad site linked above has a good page that explains the logical strategy to the game so you start to pick up things like Container Consumption and how to recognize smaller Tetris-y shapes that provide elimination information.
I also sometimes play on Puzzle Baron because it has a hint system that teaches you the logic, too.
posted by bcwinters at 5:27 AM on February 28
The Krazy Dad site linked above has a good page that explains the logical strategy to the game so you start to pick up things like Container Consumption and how to recognize smaller Tetris-y shapes that provide elimination information.
I also sometimes play on Puzzle Baron because it has a hint system that teaches you the logic, too.
posted by bcwinters at 5:27 AM on February 28
the 2-star puzzles are definitely more than twice as hard as the 1-star puzzles! thanks for posting that tutorial, bcwinters. And nice to know about puzzle baron! I play their logic puzzles a bunch, didn't realize they had so many others!
posted by solotoro at 10:45 AM on February 28
posted by solotoro at 10:45 AM on February 28
Sorry, I must be dense. When I click a square, it shows up as an X. When I click again, it turns into a star. If I click the star, the square goes back to blank. I can click anywhere at any time. Clicking Done doesn't seem to have any effect, even when I think I've placed the stars correctly. It's a cool concept but I'm not understanding how to interact with the UI and I don't see an explanation on the page
posted by treepour at 7:27 PM on March 1
posted by treepour at 7:27 PM on March 1
The X is for marking squares that you know can't contain a star, you can also click and drag to mark a longer set of squares at once, or clear them if you change your mind. Clicking Done should show either a "So Far So Good" message with how many stars you have left to place, or "You have errors in the solution." in small text above the grid. I think "auto submit" in the settings is on by default, so the page refreshes and shows you your completion time as soon as you place the last star correctly.
posted by lucidium at 4:25 AM on March 2
posted by lucidium at 4:25 AM on March 2
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posted by lucidium at 2:10 PM on February 27