Here’s one small garden, solved from the first mark to the last lantern, with no guessing. It’s an example made for this page, and it has exactly one solution. Each step shows a pattern you’ll meet in the game.
1. An area that fits in one line
Look at the teal area. All of it sits in the first column. Its lantern must be somewhere in that column, and a column only gets one lantern, so the rest of the column is empty.
2. Two areas that share two lines
The same idea works with pairs. Amber and coral both fit entirely inside the bottom two rows. Two areas need two lanterns, and two rows only hold two, so those rows’ lanterns belong to amber and coral. Everything else in those rows can go.
That move has a knock-on effect. Teal and purple have just lost their lower patches, and what’s left of them sits in rows three and four. It’s the same pattern again, so the rest of those two rows goes too.
3. The what-if test
When nothing is forced, pick a patch and ask what would happen if it held a lantern. If that would leave some row, column or area with nowhere to go, the patch can’t be right.
Row three has two open patches left, in columns one and two. A lantern in row two, column two would touch both of them, and row three would have no home for its lantern. So that patch gets an X. The first column has two open patches, in rows three and four, and a lantern in row three, column two would touch them both, so that one gets an X as well.
4. The last open patch
This is the pattern that finally lights lanterns. When a row, column or area has one open patch left, the lantern is there. Row three has only its first patch open, so search it. Then clear around it, and the second column has just one patch left, right at the top.
5. Let it fall into place
From here each lantern hands you the next. Purple has one patch left. Lighting it takes the last open patch but one from the fourth column, which leaves amber’s bottom patch. The final two lanterns are the only open patches left in their columns.
When you’re stuck
- Check the smallest areas first. They have the fewest places to hide a lantern.
- Look along the edges of areas, where a whole area may sit inside one or two lines.
- Try counting: if some number of areas fit inside the same number of rows, those rows are spoken for. It works with columns too.
- Still stuck? There’s no shame in a tip or a hint.
