Drakudoku: solve with exclusions, not guesses

Three rules on every board

Place exactly one baby dragon in every coloured territory, every row and every column. Dragons must not touch each other, including diagonally. All three rules apply at the same time. A square can be empty because of a neighbouring dragon even if its own territory has no dragon yet.

The coloured shells are regions, not clues telling you how many dragons belong there. Each region gets one. Look at its full shape: a territory can stretch across several rows or columns.

Mark what cannot work

Tap a square once to crack its shell and mark it empty. Double tap to place a dragon. Start with a small territory and consider which squares remain legal. After placing a dragon, rule out the rest of its row, its column and the surrounding touching squares.

A mark is your working note, not an extra rule. If you reach a contradiction, use Undo or Clear to revisit it. A territory with no possible square is a reason to check earlier assumptions rather than place another dragon at random.

Try the shared-row deduction

Suppose every remaining square in one territory lies in the same row. You may not know which square holds the dragon, but you do know that row belongs to that territory. Mark the squares in that row outside the territory as empty. The same reasoning works with a column.

This can create a single remaining position somewhere else. Place that forced dragon, apply its row, column and touching exclusions, then look again. A short chain of certain deductions is more useful than a guess that makes several later moves depend on it.

It also helps to inspect nearly completed rows and columns. If only one legal square remains in a row, that square must hold its dragon. Check its region and neighbours before committing so that an earlier mistaken mark does not turn into a new mistake.

After the opening collection

The opening collection contains 320 puzzles. Generated puzzles continue after that collection, so reaching its end does not mean you have reached a final level. The placement rules remain the same as the boards continue.

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