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Battleships Puzzle

Locate a three-ship fleet from row and column totals while keeping every straight ship separated, even diagonally.

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How to use

  1. 1.Move with the arrow keys and press Space to toggle ship segments; press Enter for optional water marks.
  2. 2.Build one straight ship each of lengths 3, 2, and 1, and keep distinct ships separated even diagonally.
  3. 3.Match all five row clues and all five column clues; six correct ship actions score 940.

About Battleships Puzzle

Battleships Puzzle is a five by five solitaire fleet-placement challenge. Unlike the two-player guessing game, every decision is visible on one logic grid. Place the complete disclosed fleet so each ship is horizontal or vertical, ships do not touch one another even at a corner, and every row and column contains exactly the printed number of ship segments.

Conceptis provides the primary specialist-publisher rule reference, while Games Magazine independently describes the same straight-ship, no-touch, fleet, and line-count constraints. The compact grid, fleet sizes, clue values, solution, controls, and score are Lizely product choices. This fixture contains one cruiser of length 3, one destroyer of length 2, and one submarine of length 1, for six occupied cells in total.

Move around the board with the arrow keys. Press Space to add or remove a ship segment. Press Enter to place or remove an optional water mark on an unoccupied cell. Mouse and touch users can click to toggle a ship segment and use the context-menu gesture to mark water. Water marks are personal reasoning aids; they do not alter the fleet validator or score.

The row clues from top to bottom are 3, 0, 1, 1, and 1. The column clues from left to right are 1, 2, 1, 0, and 2. The disclosed solution occupies zero-based cells 0, 1, 2, 14, 19, and 21. The first three cells form the length-3 ship across the top row. Cells 14 and 19 form the length-2 vertical ship in the last column. Cell 21 is the isolated submarine.

That arrangement matches every row and column total, contains fleet lengths 3, 2, and 1, and leaves nineteen water cells. Its ships are straight and distinct. No segment of one ship touches another orthogonally or diagonally. Six clean Space actions complete the board for 940 points from a starting score of 1,000.

Validation recalculates connected components after each ship action. A component spanning more than one row and more than one column is a bent ship and produces a contradiction. A component longer than the largest declared ship is rejected. Segments from different components may not meet diagonally. Line totals may not exceed their clues, the board cannot contain more than six ship cells, and out-of-range logic input is explicitly rejected.

Automated tests assert all row and column clues, the exact sorted fleet, six ship cells, nineteen water cells, no bending, no diagonal contact, invalid-cell rejection, a deliberate diagonal collision, a deliberate bent component, and the full six-segment keyboard simulation with final score. Completion therefore requires the full fleet contract, not only matching the total number of occupied cells.

The board uses semantic buttons in a responsive CSS grid, not a canvas. Every cell announces its row, column, ship, water, and keyboard-selection state. All surfaces, borders, focus treatments, warnings, and ship colors use site variables. There is no timer, random service, downloaded image, account, audio, hardware dependency, or pointer-only interaction.

Restart clears ships, water marks, score, moves, and contradiction state. A completed best score may be stored only in localStorage. Double-press Escape for the shared simulated spreadsheet boss cover and repeat it to return to the unchanged fleet. For related fixed logic puzzles, try Stitches, Thermometers, Tents, or Heyawake.

Methodology & sources

The validator breadth-first groups orthogonally adjacent occupied cells into ships. It checks each component is collinear, compares sorted lengths with [1,2,3], scans diagonal neighbors across different components, counts every row and column, and rejects overfilled lines or more than six cells. Completion requires exact clues and exact fleet. Score is max(0, 1000 − 10×ship actions).

Frequently asked questions

Can ships touch diagonally?
No. Distinct ships may not touch by an edge or a corner; surrounding cells are water.
Can a ship bend?
No. Every connected ship must form one uninterrupted horizontal or vertical line.
Do water marks affect completion?
No. Enter adds an optional reasoning mark. Only ship segments are counted and validated.
What fleet is hidden on this board?
One ship of length 3, one of length 2, and one of length 1, occupying six cells total.

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