Play Heyawake Online

Heyawake turns a few room totals into a whole-board shading problem. This small board has four outlined rooms. Each number tells you how many cells to black out, but black squares cannot share an edge and all white squares must still connect. Count the rooms first, then trace a possible white route through the center before committing to another black cell.

1. Read each numbered room. The corner number gives its total black cells.
2. Click an unknown cell to shade it black, click again to mark it white, and click a third time to restore unknown.
3. Count the shaded squares in each outlined room.
4. Keep black squares separated horizontally and vertically.
5. Make sure you can walk through all white squares using edge-to-edge steps.
6. Mark remaining unknown cells white to finish and check your grid.
7. Trace the thick lines first. A clue belongs to its entire two by two room, not to a single cell. On this board, the top-right room asks for two black squares, while the other rooms ask for one each. Make the two-cell choice carefully because the no-touch rule also reaches through the walls into neighboring rooms.
8. After you choose the top-right pair, look for black cells in the three rooms with a single-cell clue. One choice can prevent a neighboring room from using two of its corners. Mark the adjacent cells white immediately, then check that your white area still connects from the top to the bottom. Finally settle every unknown instead of assuming a blank means white.

• Room clues must match their black-cell totals exactly.
• Black squares cannot share a side.
• All white squares form one orthogonally connected area.
• A straight white run may not pass through more than two rooms. On this four-room board, a straight line crosses at most two rooms.
• Black cells may meet at a corner, but sharing an edge breaks the rule. The white cells have the opposite requirement: every one must join the same region through edge moves. The white-run restriction usually matters on larger Heyawake boards; the compact four-room layout here never has a straight run through three rooms.

• Place the single black cell in a room with a 1 after you rule out its neighbors.
• A 2 clue in a two by two room cannot use two touching cells, so the black pair must sit diagonally.
• Shade a candidate, then inspect each adjacent room for a forced white neighbor.
• A white cell trapped behind black cells would break connectivity. Keep an opening.
• Mark certain white cells explicitly so the game can distinguish them from undecided cells.

• Norinori: Compare how a related puzzle uses regions, paths or tile placement.
• Lits: Compare how a related puzzle uses regions, paths or tile placement.
• Nurikabe: Compare how a related puzzle uses regions, paths or tile placement.

• Small rooms give useful early counts.
• The white-area rule connects local deductions across the grid.
• Heyawake uses boundaries as a source of information instead of a barrier to solving. A cell can satisfy its own room yet block white connectivity elsewhere. That makes the final pass meaningful: the puzzle does not finish as soon as room totals match. The explicit white mark helps keep a settled deduction distinct from an undecided square.

Play Heyawake free in your browser. Start the interactive board above, use its on-screen controls and check the rules below when a deduction gets stuck. No download or account is needed.

Try another round of Heyawake on the board above. Start with the most constrained part of the grid, test each move against the stated rules, and use the reset control to try a new approach.

• Heyawake, Nikoli rules