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Lizely

Flood It

Flood an original deterministic 5 by 5 color board from its top-left region within the independently proven eight-move minimum.

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How to use

  1. 1.Start from the outlined top-left region and choose a different color to recolor it and absorb matching orthogonal neighbors.
  2. 2.Use the four color buttons, number keys 1 through 4, or arrows plus Space; use Delete or Backspace to undo a weak choice.
  3. 3.Make all 25 tiles one color within eight moves, then choose Check board or press Enter for exactly 1,000 points.

About Flood It

Flood It is a deterministic color-expansion puzzle played on an original five-by-five Lizely board. Your territory begins at the top-left tile. On each move, choose one of four colors. Every tile in the monochromatic region connected to the top-left changes to that color, and any orthogonally adjacent tiles already showing the new color join the region. Keep expanding until all 25 tiles form one connected monochromatic board. This fixed challenge must be finished in no more than eight moves.

Only horizontal and vertical neighbors count. Two matching tiles that touch at a corner are visually close but are not connected for flooding. The controlled region may bend around the board and may contain many tiles, yet every one of its tiles always shares a same-color orthogonal path back to the top-left. The interface outlines each controlled tile so expansion is not communicated by color alone. Each tile also carries a letter: B for Blue, C for Coral, G for Gold, and T for Teal.

The standard operation is grounded in two external references. The formal Flood-It complexity paper defines a move as choosing a color and changing the monochromatic component connected to the top-left tile. Simon Tatham's Flood documentation independently describes choosing a square color to flood-fill the top-left region and completing the board within a move limit. Those sources define the general rule only. They do not supply this fixture, palette, score, controls, wording, or failure policy.

The disclosed row-major starting board is 01231 / 11320 / 20231 / 32102 / 13023, where the digits correspond to the four displayed colors. It contains five Blue tiles, seven Coral tiles, seven Gold tiles, and six Teal tiles. Every row is distinct. The board never changes between sessions, so its behavior can be audited exactly rather than depending on an unrecorded random seed. Restart restores this same arrangement.

The eight-move target is not a guess. An independent breadth-first search treats each complete board coloring as a state. From every state it tries each of the three colors different from the current top-left color, performs an independently written flood operation, serializes the result, and visits each distinct board only once. Exhausting that state graph finds 415 reachable boards. No solved board occurs at depths zero through seven, and the first monochromatic board appears at depth eight.

A second independent enumeration checks every legal color sequence of exactly eight moves. It finds three minimal winning sequences: 1-0-2-3-1-0-2-3, 1-3-2-1-0-2-3-1, and 1-3-2-3-1-0-2-3. The labels shown in the interface map those IDs to Coral, Blue, Gold, and Teal. The game accepts all three verified routes. It does not compare play with only one memorized answer.

A concrete transition anchors the flood behavior. The initial controlled region is only cell zero, which is Blue. Choosing Coral recolors that tile and connects it to the Coral tiles immediately to its right and below, then continues through their orthogonally connected Coral neighbor. The controlled indices become 0, 1, 5, and 6. A separate Coral tile elsewhere remains outside until a later expansion reaches it.

The move history is deliberately visible. Each selection adds one color letter, and Undo color removes the latest selection and deterministically replays the remaining history from the original board. This replay model avoids hidden mutable snapshots. It also makes a failed limit attempt repairable: undo one or more colors, choose a stronger sequence, and check again. Choosing the region's current color is disabled because it would not alter the board and is not a meaningful standard move.

Check board uses a clear two-strike contract. If the board is unsolved and fewer than eight moves have been made, checking reports an incomplete attempt and does not add a mistake. At eight or more moves, an unsolved board is a completed limit failure. The first failed limit check records one mistake but keeps the board and Undo active. A second failed limit check deadlocks the run until Restart. This separates harmless early inspection from a genuinely exhausted attempt.

A monochromatic board earns exactly 1,000 points only when checked at or before move eight. No speed bonus, move deduction, random modifier, or hidden partial credit changes that value. Completion and deadlock are terminal: color choices, cursor movement, undo, and repeat checks no longer change state. This freeze prevents score farming and gives automated browser checks a stable result. Restart begins a fresh run with zero moves, zero mistakes, zero score, and Blue selected.

Pointer controls use four large color buttons below the board. Keyboard play is equally complete. Use the arrow keys to cycle the color cursor, press Space to choose the selected color, or press 1 through 4 to choose Blue, Coral, Gold, or Teal directly. Delete or Backspace undoes the latest color, and Enter checks the board. Repeated keydown events are ignored so holding a key cannot accidentally consume several moves. Native buttons expose color names, current-color state, and keyboard selection to assistive technology.

The layout uses a bounded five-column grid and 44-pixel color controls, so it fits a 390-pixel viewport without horizontal scrolling. Letter labels make the board usable without relying solely on hue perception. The shared game shell provides the visible score, locally stored best score, Restart, and the double-Escape boss key. Press Escape twice within the shell timing window to show the spreadsheet-style cover, then twice again to return.

All rules and state transitions run locally in the browser. The game uploads no board history, requires no account, calls no remote game service, requests no device permission, and introduces no package dependency. It is recreational strategy practice, not a diagnostic or standardized assessment. A 1,000-point result means only that this one disclosed fixture was completed within its proven minimum limit; it does not measure intelligence, vision, attention, or educational ability.

Methodology & sources

Store an original 5 by 5 four-color board as 25 row-major IDs. For each selected color, breadth-first search the old-color component from index zero using only orthogonal neighbors, recolor exactly those indices, and let matching boundary cells join through normal connectivity. Independently verify the fixture with a separate oracle that exhaustively explores serialized board states: require 415 reachable states and a first solved depth of eight. Separately enumerate every no-repeat color sequence of length eight and require exactly the three disclosed minimal routes. Replay immutable color history from the fixed board for Undo. Treat checks before the limit as incomplete, the first failed limit check as editable, the second as deadlock, and a solved board within the limit as exactly 1,000 points; freeze all gameplay input at either terminal state.

Frequently asked questions

How does the controlled region expand?
The entire same-color region connected to the top-left tile changes to your chosen color, then includes every orthogonally connected tile already showing that new color.
Do diagonally touching tiles join the flood?
No. Only horizontal and vertical edge-neighbors establish connectivity; corner contact alone does not join a tile.
Is eight moves really optimal for this board?
Yes. An independent BFS finds no solution in fewer than eight moves, and a separate sequence enumeration finds exactly three winning eight-move routes.
Does an early check count as a mistake?
No. An unsolved check before move eight is incomplete and free. The first failed limit check remains repairable with Undo; the second deadlocks the run.

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