Puzzle Royale
How to play Star Battle
One star in every row, column and region
Also known as Two Not Touch.
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Fill every line and region
Solve it by placing the puzzle’s star count — one star on the smaller boards, two on the 9×9 and 10×10 boards (marked 2★, the variant the NYT runs as "Two Not Touch") — in every row, every column and every bold-bordered region.
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Tap to cross out or star
Tap a cell once to cross it out (no star there), again to place a star, once more to clear it. Drag to cross out a whole run in one stroke.
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Stars never touch
No two stars can sit in neighbouring cells — not even diagonally. Placing a star rules out all eight cells around it.
Play Star Battle now
Solving tips
- Every star you place crosses out all eight cells around it — do the crossing immediately; that’s where the next deduction hides.
- A region squeezed into a single row or column claims that line’s star — cross out the rest of the line.
- Start with the smallest regions: fewer cells means fewer places for the star to hide.
- When a handful of regions fit entirely inside the same few rows, those rows’ stars are spoken for — cross out every other cell in them.
- A 2×2 block can hold at most one star — counting blocks puts a hard ceiling on where a region’s star can go.
- In 2★ puzzles, a line’s two stars always need a gap between them — a region squeezed into a three-cell stretch is forced to star-gap-star, and two regions confined to the same two rows claim all four of those rows’ stars.
Where Star Battle comes from
- Not a Nikoli original: Star Battle debuted at the 2003 World Puzzle Championship in Arnhem, credited to Dutch puzzle maker Hans Eendebak.
- The New York Times runs the two-star version daily as "Two Not Touch", built by Jim Bumgardner of krazydad.com.
- LinkedIn’s daily game Queens is a one-star Star Battle in disguise — crowns for stars, coloured regions for the bold-bordered cages.
- Chess in disguise: the stars are simultaneously non-attacking rooks (one per row and column) and non-attacking kings (none may touch).
- NP-complete in general, like every other family in this game — verifying the stars is quick, placing them is provably hard.
Play it against a hundred other solvers
Puzzle Royale wraps Star Battle and seven other logic puzzles in a battle
royale: a hundred solvers enter, four rounds, half the field goes out each time,
one champion. Or play it untimed in Practice with no stakes at all.
Try a Star Battle puzzle
The other seven