How to play Star Battle › Techniques
Cell elimination
Cell elimination rules out a cell when placing a star there would dot out every remaining cell of some other row, column or region. That unit would then have no place for its star, which is impossible, so the cell gets a dot. Small regions next to the cell are the usual victims.
How to use it
- Pick a small region (or a row or column with few open cells).
- Find any cell outside it that touches, or shares a row or column with, every one of its open cells.
- A star in that cell would leave the region empty, so dot the cell.
- Repeat around every small region; the dots often create single candidates.
Worked example (6×6)
Highlighted: the cells the deduction looks at. Dots mean "no star here".
A star in the circled cell would touch or line up with every cell of the yellow region, dotting all of them, and that region would have nowhere left for its star. So the circled cell can't be a star: it gets a dot.
From a real Solvedle puzzle. Needed in easy puzzles.
Practise on unlimited puzzles →
FAQ
Why is this sometimes called "seeing" a unit?
A cell "sees" every cell it would rule out: its row, its column, its region and its eight neighbours. If it sees all of a unit's open cells, it can't hold a star.
Does it work with rows and columns too?
Yes. A region that lies entirely inside one row is the classic case: every other cell of that row sees the whole region, so the rest of the row is dotted out.