How to Play Star Battle: Rules and Solving Tips

The rules

Place stars in the grid so that every row, every column and every region outlined in bold contains the same number of stars: one on our 6×6 and 8×8 puzzles, two on the 10×10 ones. Stars may never touch, not even diagonally. Each puzzle has exactly one solution.

1. A star rules out all eight neighbours

The moment you place a star, put a dot in every square around it. Those squares can never hold a star, and dotting them keeps the grid easy to read.

The eight squares touching a star can't hold another star.

2. A region trapped in one row

If a region lies entirely inside one row, its star is that row's star. Every other square in the row is therefore empty. The same goes for a region inside a single column.

The shaded region lies wholly in the fourth row, so the row's star is somewhere in it, and the rest of the row is empty.

This scales up. If two regions lie entirely within the same two rows, they use up both of those rows' stars, so every other square in those two rows is empty.

3. Small regions and pairs of squares

Start with the smallest regions: they have the fewest places for a star. When a region is just two squares side by side, its star is in one of them, so any square that touches both can be dotted out.

The star in the two-square region touches the squares above and below both of its cells, whichever cell it takes. Those four squares are empty.

4. Count what's left

When a row, column or region has exactly as many possible squares left as stars it still needs, they are all stars. When it already has its stars, everything else in it is empty. Keep cycling through rows, columns and regions asking these two questions.

Two-star puzzles

On the 10×10 grids every row, column and region needs two stars, so counting matters more. A useful check: a 2×2 block can hold at most one star, because any two squares in it touch. If a region fits inside two 2×2 blocks, each block gets exactly one of its stars.