GridWits

Pocket Overflow

Expert Used by Smart Hint

If making a cell land would seal an empty cell in on all four sides, that trapped cell can't be a lone piece of sea with nowhere to connect — so it has to be land too. If taking both together overflows an island or joins two islands, the first cell was never land: it's sea.

2

How it works

  1. One step further than Land Squeeze: instead of checking whether a land cell breaks something straight away, check what that land cell would FORCE next.
  2. Watch for a cell it would seal in — an empty square with land on all four sides. That square can't be sea, because a single sea cell cut off from every other one has no way to join the rest of the sea.
  3. So it must be land as well, and the two of them arrive together. If taking both overflows the island they'd join — or if the sealed square is hemmed in by two different islands, so it can't be land either — then the first cell was never land to begin with.
  4. It's sea.