stumped.
Stumped: a woodland sudoku, illustrated among the trees

A quiet little challengeRooted in logic.

Your patch of peace

A little time
in the woods.

A fresh forest. A few hidden stumps.
Find your way, one square at a time.

Growing a puzzle…

Settings

Region shapes

Best times

Clean solves first, then by time. Scroll to browse sizes; swipe sideways for other difficulties.

How to play

Every forest hides one stump for each row. Find them all by logic, before you run out of acorns.

The rules

  • One stump in every row.

  • One stump in every column.

  • One stump in every color patch.

  • Stumps never touch, not even at the corners.

Controls

  • Tap a square to put an X on it, as a note that no stump is there. Tap again to clear it.

  • Drag across squares to mark them all. Start on an X to erase instead.

  • Double tap a square to reveal its stump.

  • A wrong guess leaves a red X and costs an acorn . You start with three, or one in silver acorn mode .

  • Undo

    Takes back your last tap or drag. Reveals, hints, and lost acorns stay.

  • What if?

    Opens a pencil layer to test an idea. Double tap for a pencil stump, which is never checked and costs nothing. Keep turns your pencil X’s into real ones, and Discard throws them away.

  • Pencil stumps are small, and pencil X’s sit in the corner. A pencil stump that breaks a rule gets a red ring.

Hints

Each hint works once per puzzle, but not while What if? is on. A solve with a hint doesn’t earn the clean solve ★.

  • Woodpecker reveals a stump for you, in the patch with the fewest open squares.

  • Owl explains the next step you can work out, and makes that mark when you close it. It is also the only way to learn that one of your X’s covers a stump.

  • Squirrel puts X’s on three random squares that have no stump.