Battleships (PuzzleMadness)

About Battleships (PuzzleMadness)

Battleships is the solo logic version of the pencil game. Above the grid is the fleet to place, and the numbers beside each row and column tell you how many squares in that line hold part of a ship. Ships may not touch each other, not even at a corner. Some ship pieces are given to start. On PuzzleMadness you click a square to cycle it between unknown, water and ship, and the site works out which kind of ship section it is.

The daily page opens today's puzzle on its own, and its title carries the date (on 3 October 2026 it read "Daily Medium Battleships Puzzle for Saturday 3rd October 2026"). There is a separate dated puzzle for each size: Small, Medium, Large and Mixed. Past days stay in the archive, so a missed puzzle can be played later, and there is a print version and an image download of the grid. PuzzleMadness does not publish solutions: the site tells you when you have finished a grid correctly or made a mistake. Each completed puzzle adds to your total on the Battleships monthly and all-time leaderboards, where only your best score on any one puzzle counts.

Fill rows and columns with a 0 with water first, then surround given ship pieces with water where they cannot extend. Place the largest ship early, since it has the fewest places it fits. The fleet list turns green as each ship is placed, which helps you track what is left.

PuzzleMadness is a British puzzle site with dozens of daily puzzle types in the browser, from many sudoku variants to logic grids such as Nurikabe, Hashi and Slitherlink. It is free to play and carries ads. A free account keeps track of the puzzles you have finished and puts your name on the leaderboards, and the badges next to usernames mark how many puzzles a player has completed.

How to play Battleships (PuzzleMadness)

1. Open the day's Battleships page and choose Small, Medium, Large or Mixed.
2. Mark every square in 0 rows and columns as water.
3. Click squares to mark ship parts, keeping ships apart on all sides, including diagonals.
4. Place the whole fleet so every row and column count is met; the site marks the puzzle solved.

Screenshots

Tips

• Squares diagonal to any ship piece are always water.
• Find where the longest ship can fit first.
• When a line's count equals its unknown squares, they are all ship.

Questions