Star Battle (TryHard Puzzles)

About Star Battle (TryHard Puzzles)

Star Battle, also sold as Two Not Touch, asks you to place two stars in every row, every column and every outlined region of the grid, with no two stars touching, not even at a corner. TryHard Puzzles is a small free site built around it, with a Queens section and a route puzzle called Slidesmith beside it.

Every day at midnight UTC three new boards go up: Easy and Medium on a 9x9 grid and Hard on a 10x10 one. An Expert board and the day's Stars puzzle from Inkwell Games sit below them as bonus boards. All players get the same boards on the same day, and the site says each is checked by computer to have exactly one solution reachable by logic alone.

You tap a cell to cycle through an X, a star and blank, and drag to cross off a run of cells; a Shade mode, undo and redo, a Check button and a counter of stars placed help along the way. Today's boards are free with no account. A free account keeps your daily streak and opens every past puzzle in the archive, and the site publishes step-by-step solutions, a tutorial and a strategy guide.

It suits players coming from LinkedIn's Queens who want the harder two-star version, with a gentle easy board to warm up on.

How to play Star Battle (TryHard Puzzles)

1. Open tryhardpuzzles.com/star-battle and pick Easy, Medium or Hard for today.
2. Tap a cell to cycle it from X to star to blank; drag to cross off a run of cells.
3. Place exactly two stars in every row, every column and every outlined region.
4. Keep stars apart: no two may touch, even diagonally.
5. Press Check when all stars are placed, then try the next difficulty or the Expert board.

Screenshots

Tips

• Start with the smallest region: its few cells decide where its two stars can go.
• A region squeezed into two rows takes both stars of those rows, so cross out the rest of them.
• Expect to place far more X's than stars on the hard boards.

Questions