News/blogposts – Trace skills – Mazes – Grid puzzles – Image Sudoku – Tents themed – Logic math – Logic tabels – Logic grid puzzle

Logic puzzle Tent

Tent is a well known logic puzzle. The game was invented by Léon Balmaekers (Netherlands) in 1989. I was published for the first time in a Breinbrekers magazine.

The original games consist of trees and tents. The puzzles made by SW Publisering are based on the same rules, but the trees and tents are swapped with other items that fit a theme. The theme used in this example of how to solve the puzzle is ‘Hugs and Kisses,’ with lips and hearts as symbols.

The goal

The puzzle is a grid of squares; some of them contain kisses. The goal is to place hearts in some of the remaining squares in such a way that the following conditions are met:

1. There are exactly as many kisses as hearts.
2. The numbers on the outside of the grid tell you how many hearts there are in the row or column.
3. The hearts and kisses can be matched up in such a way that each heart is directly adjacent (horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally) to its own kiss. A heart may be adjacent to other kisses as well as its own.
4. No two hearts are adjacent horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

How to play

Step 1: Eliminate

Start by eliminating all the spaces where there cannot be a heart. In this puzzle, there are two rows with 0 hearts. X out those cells

Step 2: Eliminate diagonals

Look closer at the grid and eliminate the cells that are not close to a kiss or diagonal to a kiss. X out those cells.

Step 3: Find a row/column with empty cells that matches the number in the clues

Column one has 3 empty spaces and should have 3 hearts. Mark the cells with hearts.

Step 4: Find a row/column with a match

Row one has 2 empty spaces and should have 2 hearts. Mark the cells with hearts.

Rows two and four have all the hearts they need. X out the empty cells in those rows.

Step 5: Eliminate again

Since the kiss in the second row, third column has a heart, the cell in the third row cannot have a heart. X out the cell.

Step 6: Find a row/column with a match

Column three must have a heart in row five. Mark the cell with a heart.

Step 7: Eliminate again

Row five can’t have more hearts so you can X that cell out. Now you are left with only one possibility to place the heart and the puzzle is solved.

If the puzzle isn’t solved by step 7 you can repeat step 4 and 5 until the puzzle is solved.

My logic tent puzzles on Etsy:

Click on the images to be redirected to the corresponding Etsy listing.