Land Squeeze
Expert
Used by Smart Hint
The mirror image of Contested Space: if making a cell land would break the board right away — overflowing the island it would join, or walling a different island off from the room it still needs — then it's sea.
- Cells that establish the pattern
How it works
- Contested Space asks what breaks if a cell becomes SEA. This asks the opposite question: what breaks if it becomes LAND?
- A land cell touching exactly one island has to join that island — there's nowhere else for it to belong. So try it: add the cell, and see whether the island now overshoots the number on its clue.
- Also check the rest of the board, not just that one island: claiming the cell may be what walls a DIFFERENT island off from the last open squares it needed to reach its own number.
- If either happens, the cell could never have been land. It's sea.