Daily Battleship Solitaire Puzzle

Every day at Zolelot, one new Battleship Solitaire puzzle goes live. It's the same board for every player — the same grid Dan solves with his family each morning. Resets at midnight local time. Free to play, no account required.

A new puzzle, every day

The daily format is intentional. A single shared puzzle means you can compare your solve with anyone else's: same board, same clues, same constraints. Ask a friend "how long did today's take you?" and you're talking about exactly the same challenge.

There's no archive to replay. Only today's puzzle is available. This keeps the daily routine meaningful — each day is a fresh start, and everyone is on equal footing.

How the puzzles are generated

The puzzles are not hand-authored or recycled from a fixed library. Every night, a Python generator creates a new candidate puzzle. A tiered solver then validates it against two requirements:

• The puzzle must have exactly one valid solution.
• That solution must be reachable by pure logical deduction — no guessing required at any step.

If the candidate fails either check, it's discarded and a new one is generated. Only puzzles that pass are published. This is why difficulty stays consistently in the T3–T5 expert range — harder than most newspaper puzzles, but always fair.

A daily solving routine that works

Based on how Dan solves in the tutorial video, a repeatable routine makes every daily puzzle faster:

1. Fill 0-clue rows and columns first. If a row or column shows 0, every cell in it is water. Click the clue number to auto-fill the entire line instantly.
2. Process the given hints. A submarine hint (circle) means all 8 surrounding cells are water. A corner hint means the ship continues in exactly one direction — close the diagonal and rear cells immediately.
3. Find the battleship (4-cell ship) next. It has the fewest possible placements on a 10×10 grid. Narrow down rows and columns where it can't fit and you'll often pin its location quickly.
4. Work down through the fleet. After placing the battleship, find the two cruisers (3-cell), then destroyers (2-cell). Submarines (1-cell) usually fall into place last as remaining open cells narrow.
5. Watch the fleet counter. When a ship type hits 0, every remaining unresolved segment of that size must be water. Especially useful in the final third of the solve.

Using this order consistently — 0s, hints, battleship, cruisers, counter — you'll rarely get stuck. Hard puzzles require more steps but the same structure holds.

Frequently asked questions

Go to today's puzzle | Rules | Quick guide | Video walkthrough