Nurikabe
Expert
00:00
Classic
Expert Nurikabe — what to expect
Expert Nurikabe takes Hard’s reasoning onto an 11×11 board — 121 cells. No new technique: unreachable-cell logic is still what cracks it. But chains run longer, more islands compete for the same space, and keeping track of what you have already settled matters as much as spotting the next move.
How to play Nurikabe
- Every cell ends up one of two things: island, left white, or sea, shaded black.
- Each number is the SIZE of its island — that many white cells joined edge to edge, with the number itself counted among them.
- Every island holds exactly one number. So a 1 is finished where it stands, and the four cells beside it — above, below, left and right — are sea. Its corners are free.
- Two islands never sit side by side. Meeting at a corner is fine — a finished board is full of diagonal contacts.
- All the black cells join into one single sea. Nothing may be walled off from the rest of it.
- No 2×2 block may be entirely sea. When three corners of one are black the fourth has to be white, and that is where many boards open up.
- Every puzzle has one solution, reachable by logic alone, and every board has a move you can make from the empty grid.