What "easy" means here
We don't grade puzzles by eye. Every board goes through our solver, which replays it the way a careful human would — one forced mark at a time — and adds up how much work each deduction takes. A board that scores under 400 is easy. In plain terms: every single star on an easy board is forced by one direct observation. You never have to hold two ideas in your head at once. You look at a region, see that only two cells can hold its stars, and place them. Then you look at the next one.
Easy boards are also built differently. We generate them with compact regions of at least four cells and a strong preference for tidy, blocky shapes, because tight regions are what create direct deductions. Here is the part that surprises people: easy boards are the rarest kind for us to make. A randomly generated Star Battle with a unique solution is nearly always hard or expert. Producing a board that a beginner can walk through in three minutes means generating hundreds and keeping the few that qualify. Every easy puzzle you play here was one of the keepers.
The three moves you need
Every easy board falls to these. Learn them cold and the rest of the site opens up.
1. Mark the neighbours
The instant you place a star, put an X on all eight cells around it. Stars can never touch — not side by side, not at a corner — so those eight cells are done for good. This one habit does more work than any other rule in the game, and it is the habit easy boards are designed to build. Place a star, ring it with X's, then look for the next star. Never skip the ring.
1 Place a star.
2 The no-touch rule X's every neighbour instantly — one star, eight eliminations.
2. Finish what's nearly finished
A row, a column or a region that already has its two stars is complete — every other cell in it is an X. And one that is down to just two open cells is complete the other way — both of those cells must be stars. On an easy board these completions chain: one closes a row, which closes a region, which forces a star, which rings eight more X's. After every star you place, sweep the whole board for anything you can finish.
1 Three of this region's five cells are already X'd — only two remain open.
2 A region needs exactly two stars, so both open cells must be stars. Rows and columns work the same way.
3. Spot the trapped region
Some regions sit entirely inside a single row or a single column. When one does, it owns both of that line's stars — so every cell in the line outside the region can be X'd immediately, before you have placed anything. This is the classic easy-board opening. On a fresh grid, look for the smallest, flattest region first; it is usually where the board wants you to start.
1 This region sits entirely inside one row — both of that row's stars must fall inside it.
2 The rest of the row can never hold a star — X it out.
Want it walked through? The interactive tutorial plays a full easy board with you, one move at a time, and the rules page covers the game in a minute.
A typical easy solve
Three phases, and the third one does itself.
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1
The opening: trapped regions
Scan the outlines before you touch anything. Find a region confined to one row or column and X the rest of that line. Find a small region with only two cells that could possibly hold non-touching stars and place them. An easy board usually gives you two or three of these for free.
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2
The middle: ring and sweep
Now it is a rhythm. Place a star, ring its eight neighbours, sweep every row, column and region for one you can complete. Each completion hands you the next star. On an easy board this phase should never stall; if it does, a ring is missing somewhere.
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3
The finish: the cascade
Around the halfway mark the board tips. Every star forces two or three more and the last rows fill in a rush. This is the moment the puzzle is really about, and it is why people come back the next day.
When you get stuck
On an easy board, being stuck means one thing: an X is missing. Never a technique — just a mark. Run this checklist in order and the board will move again.
- Look at every star you have placed. Are all eight neighbours X'd? A missed diagonal is the most common leak in the game.
- Find every row, column and region that already has two stars. Is every other cell in it crossed off?
- Find every row, column and region with exactly two open cells left. Those are stars — place them.
- Leave Auto-mark Xs on in the settings. The board will ring every star and clear every completed line for you, so you can spend your attention on spotting the next move.
Still stuck? Every daily easy puzzle has a free step-by-step solution that names each move. Find the first step where the solution's board differs from yours; that one mark is the whole lesson.
When to move up
You are ready for medium when two things are true: you finish easy boards without ever wondering what to do next, and you have caught yourself wishing there were more to think about. Medium adds exactly one new idea — counting how many stars a slice of the board has to hold — and that single idea is the bridge to everything harder. There is no rush. The daily easy will be here tomorrow either way, and the archive has every one we have ever published.
Prefer paper? The free printable Easy book puts twenty of these boards on five pages, ready for the kitchen table or the classroom.