Heyawake Puzzle Online Free
Shade some squares in each room. Numbers say how many, shaded squares can’t touch, and no white line may cross two room walls.
Tap to shade, tap again for a dot, again to clear. Drag to paint.
What is Heyawake?
Heyawake is a shading puzzle played on a grid divided into rooms. You shade squares so that each numbered room has exactly that many shaded squares, no two shaded squares share a side, all the white squares stay connected, and no straight line of white squares crosses more than one room wall.
The name is Japanese for “divided rooms”, and the puzzle comes from Nikoli, the publisher behind Sudoku’s popularity. It’s one of the harder shading puzzles; Nurikabe is a good warm-up because it uses a similar connected-area rule.
How to play Heyawake Puzzle
- The grid is split into rooms by thick lines. A number in a room tells you exactly how many of its squares are shaded. Rooms without a number can have any amount.
- Shaded squares can’t share a side (touching at corners is fine).
- All the white squares must connect into one area, moving up, down, left and right.
- A straight line of white squares, across or down, can’t pass through more than two rooms in a row. In other words, it can’t cross two thick walls.
- Tap a square once to shade it, again to mark it with a dot (a square you know stays white), and a third time to clear it. Drag to fill several squares the same way. Every puzzle is made fresh and checked to have exactly one solution, so it can always be solved by logic without guessing. Use Hint if you’re stuck, and pick a size at the top of the board.
Heyawake Puzzle skills
- Logical deduction
- Counting within regions
- Keeping a region connected
Level: Ages 10 and up
Tips for Heyawake
A 1 × 3 room numbered 2 must shade both ends, because the two shaded squares can’t touch.
Look for long rows of white squares that cross room walls: one square between the walls must be shaded.
Next to any shaded square, mark the four neighbours with dots. They must be white.
Heyawake Puzzle questions and answers
What is Heyawake?
Heyawake is a shading puzzle from Nikoli. Its name means “divided rooms”. You shade squares so that shaded squares never touch, white squares stay connected, numbered rooms have that many shaded squares, and no line of white squares crosses two room walls.
What does the room-crossing rule mean?
Read along any row or column. If you can walk through white squares from one room, across a thick wall into a second room, and across another thick wall into a third, the rule is broken. Something in that line must be shaded.
Why don’t all rooms have numbers?
Some numbers are left out to make the puzzle more interesting. The remaining rules are still enough to give exactly one solution.