⬛ Shade Out
🧩 Puzzle · 16 playsShade Out
Black out the duplicates — carefully, and without splitting the board.
About Shade Out
This one works backwards: instead of filling cells in, you black them out. The grid is stuffed with repeated numbers and your job is to shade enough of them that no number appears twice unshaded in any row or column. Two rules keep it honest — shaded cells may never sit side by side, and every cell you leave white has to stay joined to the rest in one connected group. Elimination as a puzzle, and quietly addictive.
How to Play
Tap a cell to shade it; tap again to clear it or mark it safe. No number may repeat unshaded in any row or column. Shaded cells can't touch edge to edge, and all white cells must stay connected.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Three identical numbers in a row is the single most useful pattern on the board. The middle one must stay unshaded and both outer ones must be shaded — because if you shaded the middle, its two neighbours would have to be white, and that leaves two matching numbers unshaded in the same line, which is illegal.
The near-miss version works too: two identical numbers with exactly one cell between them (as in 4-7-4) force that middle cell to stay white. Shading it would touch both 4s, forcing them both white, and you are back to the same clash.
Every shading is worth a second move for free. The instant you shade a cell, all four of its orthogonal neighbours are definitely white — circle them. And the instant you confirm a cell is white, every other copy of that number in its row and column must be shaded. Bouncing between those two rules chains right across the grid.
Before you commit to a shade, check the connection rule. If shading a cell would seal off a white cell or a small group in a corner, that shade is simply wrong, and you have deduced a white cell instead. Late in a puzzle, connectivity decides more cells than the duplicate rule does.