Classic Battleships Light
Classic Battleships Light is the new addition to the Conceptis series of logic puzzle packs. So then, will you sink or swim? With this new batch of quality puzzles, any experience level can dive right in. Anchors aweigh! (And there's plenty more ship puns where that came from.)
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Battleships Classic Tips and Tricks
Getting Started
-
A good way to begin is each puzzle is to look for 0s along the edges. Any row or column marked with a 0 can instantly be filled with water.
-
Next, look for rows and columns that have exactly enough spaces left to be completely filled with ship pieces. Keeping an eye out for higher numbers can help you spot areas with lots of ships to fill in.
-
After you've started filling in some ships, watch for rows and columns with low numbers that might already have their requisite number of ship pieces and fill what's left in with water. If you alternate between this step and the previous step, you can clear a large portion of these puzzles quickly.
Advanced Techniques
-
Remember that the shapes of the ships are important. One-piece ships are always circles, and three- and four-piece ships always have squares in the middle. If one of these shapes is present at the start of the puzzle, you can narrow down what size of ship you'll be dealing with.
-
Keep your largest ships in mind. As you place more water, you'll notice that there are fewer places that three- and four-piece ships can fit. If you use the numbers along the sides, you can easily narrow down where they might go.
-
If you have a puzzle that starts off with a square ship piece as a provided hint, you know it must be in the middle of a ship, although you can't immediately determine whether the ship will run horizontally or vertically. However, if you use the numbers along the sides as a clue, you could eliminate one of the directions if placing the ship in a certain direction means that the row or column would be overfilled.
I think I've finished, but it hasn't said I've won yet. What did I do wrong?
-
Check to make sure you didn't go over the quotas for ships. It's easy to accidentally put in too many one- or two-piece ships to finish a grid.
-
Make sure no ships are diagonally touching. Remember that there must be a one-space border around every ship, regardless of their size.
Great game (I've played on conceptis before), but they really need to fix a problem. If you click and drag to set a lot of blocks at once and move outside the play field before you release the mouse, the mouse isn't unclicked (hope that makes sense).
Am I doing something wrong or is there indeed no logical way to solve these problems? I always have to try and error and this makes it very annyoing.
Either I'm too stupid for this game or I was right to leave it after 10 mins.
@Goliath
There's always a logical solution. Did you try looking at Art's list of Tips 'n' Tricks?
I would have first noted that every ship must be bordered completely by water including diagonals for one thing. Threw me off, and made the puzzles far easier to approach.
You can click the number next to the row/column to fill the rest of the line with water. Once a line is filled, the number will be greyed out, but this does not mean it is correct or even if it has the right number of ship pieces.
Red squares indicate that a ship piece is "touching" another ship piece or you are trying to remove a preset piece.
Though sometimes the right choice might not be apparent at first, once you get a strategy going, most of these puzzles should not taken > 5min (I did most of the last ones in 2).
There is an annoying glitch where it sometimes "holds down" your mouse, making it seem you're double clicking and creating a mess when you move. Luckily the undo button is very useful and smart.
I liked these, it's a bit too bad the main site is for-pay because I just don't think they were that good. Still, I'll give them another shot the next time I see them in the newspaper or somesuch.
@ MmeTurbulence
Alright, I give it another try. I love the concept after all.
(Sometimes I'm just too lazy)
I solved all the prior puzzles, but level 2-3 doesn't seem to fit the assertion that "there's always a logical solution". I can only get 6 ship segments and 21 water squares through pure logic (without resorting to trial and error).
Or do you mean "if you use trial and error, you will eventually reach a logical inconsistency, proving that your guess wasn't correct"? I'm not sure I'd call that a "logical solution"...
This comment is for those people (including the reviewer) who lamented how easy all these levels are.
Here is level 2-3 at the start (where X represents water, and #'s represent ships, with orientation indicated with ASCII art):
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | | | 3
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | | | 2
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | | | 0
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | | | 6
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | | | 1
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | | | 2
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | |###| | | | | 4
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | | | 2
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4 1 1 2 2 4 0 6
And here is as far as pure logic will take me:
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | | | | | X |/#\| 3
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+###+
| | | | | | | X |\#/| 2
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | 0
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|###| | | | |###| X |###| 6
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | X | | | X | | X | | 1
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | X | | X | | X | | 2
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | |###| | | X | | 4
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| | | X | | X | | X | | 2
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4 1 1 2 2 4 0 6
What am I missing here (logically, I mean)? At this point, how can one progress without trial and error?
Actually, GTB, you bring up a really good point that should be added to the Tips section. Take a look at the bit of ship that was given at the start at the bottom of the grid. Since it's a square piece of ship, you don't know if it'll run horizontally or vertically, but you do know that that bit is in the middle of a ship. However, if you take a look at the number at the bottom of that column, you find that only two ship pieces are in that column. If the ship were to run vertically, there would have to be at least one additional piece above and below the given bit (meaning there'd be at least three ship spaces), but since there's only two in the column, you know this isn't possible. Therefore, the ship must run horizontally. You can fill the spaces above and below the given ship piece with water, and the spaces to the left and right of it with ship segments. You can probably figure out the rest from there. Thanks for pointing that out!
It makes sense now that you point it out. I was assuming that the square ship the game put down at the beginning of the level was just like the square, gray ships I put down, that just mean "piece of ship here (indeterminate orientation/dimensions)", but now I realize that would be inconsistent with the more fully-formed shapes that are sometimes laid down by the game at the beginning of other levels.
[The confusion, of course, is that a square is not the best symbol for "indeterminate shape", particularly when almost all the other possibilities are smaller than (inset from) the square shape.]
Once the meaning of that shape is know, the level becomes quite easy to complete, and then the rest of the levels are a breeze. So now I have to concur with the reviewer and other comments: none of the levels are at all challenging (once the rules are made clear). But my elementary-school kids are enjoying it.
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Battleships Classic Tips and Tricks
Getting Started
A good way to begin is each puzzle is to look for 0s along the edges. Any row or column marked with a 0 can instantly be filled with water.
Next, look for rows and columns that have exactly enough spaces left to be completely filled with ship pieces. Keeping an eye out for higher numbers can help you spot areas with lots of ships to fill in.
After you've started filling in some ships, watch for rows and columns with low numbers that might already have their requisite number of ship pieces and fill what's left in with water. If you alternate between this step and the previous step, you can clear a large portion of these puzzles quickly.
Advanced Techniques
Remember that the shapes of the ships are important. One-piece ships are always circles, and three- and four-piece ships always have squares in the middle. If one of these shapes is present at the start of the puzzle, you can narrow down what size of ship you'll be dealing with.
Keep your largest ships in mind. As you place more water, you'll notice that there are fewer places that three- and four-piece ships can fit. If you use the numbers along the sides, you can easily narrow down where they might go.
If you have a puzzle that starts off with a square ship piece as a provided hint, you know it must be in the middle of a ship, although you can't immediately determine whether the ship will run horizontally or vertically. However, if you use the numbers along the sides as a clue, you could eliminate one of the directions if placing the ship in a certain direction means that the row or column would be overfilled.
I think I've finished, but it hasn't said I've won yet. What did I do wrong?
Check to make sure you didn't go over the quotas for ships. It's easy to accidentally put in too many one- or two-piece ships to finish a grid.
Make sure no ships are diagonally touching. Remember that there must be a one-space border around every ship, regardless of their size.
Posted by: Steve
|
January 11, 2011 10:01 AM