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Forgive me if this is in the wrong section, but as far as I can tell, the puzzle help section is for specific puzzles.

I'm a long-time fan of battleships puzzles, and can easily solve the ones published in GAMES magazine, but a majority of the puzzles presented on this site have me completely stumped. I've even had to develop some new techniques (at least new to me) to solve some of them, including counting how many segments are in unclued rows and columns and using those as extra clues.

Having said that, I just feel like I'm still missing something, as even some of the 1-star puzzles on this site gave me some trouble. So, I'm asking the masters out there, especially the site admins (who seem to make a lot of the puzzles I get stuck on):

Is there any expert advice you have that goes beyond basic logic that could help me solve these? For example, what techniques do you use to test-solve your own puzzles?

I want to avoid guess-and-check solutions as much as possible, but I feel that sometimes it's the only way to make progress. I don't mind guessing between two or three positions for a ship or ship segment, but when your fleet consists of 16 submarines and you only have 6 number clues in your puzzle, logic can only take you so far.

I'd hardly call myself an expert in Battleships puzzles, but I can give you some solving tips that can help solve puzzles like this one. (Which is one with 16 subs and just 6 number clues, maybe the one you're referring too?)

First, try if you can determine numbers for rows and columns that don't have them. In the puzzle I linked to, you can easily determine numbers for every column. Rows are tougher, but you don't need to have them all at the start, because the column numbers will give you a lot to work with.

Also, in puzzles like this, you need to put waves in every spot that you can determine, and sometimes you need to run possibilities. For example, if you know that a row/column needs 3 subs, there's only a small number of patterns you can put them in, and there may be adjecent positions that will have waves in every case.

This site has some very skilled puzzle creators. A lot of the puzzles here require breaking with the formulaic solving approaches you can get trapped in if you're used to 'mainstream' puzzle magazines. I've become a lot more skilled at solving since I started puzzling here.

Actually, that puzzle you can determine all rows too. the rows are actually the part that opens up the puzzle in my opinion(having made it). But yeah, it��s mostly an elimination puzzle, instead of working out where the ships go directly, you can exclude where it can��t go.
Both puzzles don��t need to run possibilities if you solve them the right way.

I put down some tips for the sub only puzzles. I put them in white, so you can highlight whatever tips you want to read. They kinda work up towards being more helpful. I think you can deduce the second and third from the first. So I��d just start with the first one and see how far that brings you.

Tip 1:

The trick to that puzzle type is that 16 subs is the maximum you can put in an 8 by 8 grid
As you can only put one sub in a 2 by 2 square. As an 8 by 8 grid is made up out of 16 2 by 2 squares, that is the maximum number of subs.

Tip 2:

This also means that in 2 connected rows/columns the maximum is 4. So, rows 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8 each have 4 subs.

Tip 3:

The third trick is that if 2 touching rows/columns not in those 4 pairs (2-3,4-5,6-7) add up together to 4, you know that there has to be a sub in all 4 2x2 squares they are made up of.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, Bram. That actually helped immensely. I wasn't thinking about the problem that way, but it made the puzzle very enjoyable once I did. I'm hoping I can use that kind of logic in other puzzles with other types of ships.

Interestingly enough, I solved your other 16-sub puzzle with no problem using similar logic, but I didn't realize it at the time.

Also, I didn't quite touch on it in my first post, but I've been having a lot of trouble with some of the other puzzles with standard fleets. However, if I have any more specific questions, I'll be sure to post them in the right place.

A couple of additional tips for standard fleets that I've found (which work fairly well for 2-3* puzzles, not necessarily 4*):

1) When you have a ship segment that you can place, you can always mark the 4 diagonally adjacent squares as water. This one might seem semi-obvious, but it took me a little while to catch on so I wanted to say it as a lead in to tip 2.

2) If there are N+1 possible places in a row/col, and N ships go in (basically there's one empty), then you mark squares that are diagonally adjacent to two possible spots from that row. For instance:

12345
???X?
67890

If there are 3 segments in the row with question marks, then 4 and 9 must be water as well.

3) When stuck, a useful place to look is for where to put the largest ship. Alternatively, if you have enough pieces of ships, you might be able to figure out how many ships are left and work from there.

Those are at least a few of the tips I've had for battleships. Hopefully they help a bit!

connect4, thanks for the tips, but those are the ones that aren't working XD.

You should try some of the battleships puzzles on this site, some of them require pretty devious logic