Shoal: the daily fleet puzzle

A fleet is hiding in the water. The numbers beside the grid say how many ship cells each row and column holds, ships never touch (not even at the corners), and every board has exactly one answer. One puzzle a day, the same for everyone, no ads and no account.

How to play

Each puzzle hides a small fleet of straight ships: the list above the board shows how many ships of each length. The numbers on the top and left say how many cells in that column or row belong to a ship. A ship is a straight line of one or more cells, ships may not touch each other, not even diagonally, and the cells already shown on the board are given for free (a ringed dot is open water, and a ringed ship cell is part of a ship). Mark every ship cell. Water marks are just notes for yourself, so use as many or as few as you like.

Reading the given ship cells. A given ship cell shows you its shape. A fully round cell is a ship of one cell on its own, so all eight cells around it are water. A cell rounded on one side only is the end of a longer ship: the ship continues from the flat side, and the cell beyond the rounded side is water. A square cell with no rounded side is a middle piece of a ship of three or more. The cells you mark take the same shapes as they join up.

Tap or click a cell to cycle it: empty, then water (a dot), then ship (a filled block). If a cycle is slow on a phone, switch "Tap sets" to Ship or Water. On a keyboard, move with the arrow keys and press S for ship, W for water, X to clear. A number turns faint with a tick when its line is complete and gets a wavy underline and an exclamation mark when you have marked too many. Undo is free. Check marks every wrong mark with a cross and adds a check to your result. Hint fills in one cell for you and adds a hint to your result.

Stuck? The guide to solving battleship-style puzzles teaches the techniques every Shoal board can be solved with, and the Shoal solver will solve, check and explain any board you type in.

How scoring and sharing work

Every board has exactly one answer, found by two independent programs, and each one can be solved by logic alone, with no guessing: Monday to Thursday boards need at most one "what if" step at a time, and the Friday to Sunday boards can need a "what if" inside a "what if" (that is what the Hint button is for). You earn three stars for no checks and no hints, two stars for up to two checks and hints together, and one star for any other finish. From Monday 12 October the grid starts at 6 by 6 on Mondays and Tuesdays, is 7 by 7 from Wednesday to Friday and 8 by 8 at the weekend. (The launch Saturday, 10 October, is a gentle 6 by 6 opener.) The new puzzle arrives at midnight on your own clock.