What Is Star Battle?
Star Battle is a daily grid-based logic puzzle from CleverGoat. The board is divided into colored regions, and the goal is to determine where the stars belong using deduction rather than guessing.
Every row, every column, and every colored region must contain exactly one star.
Star Battle Rules
A completed puzzle must satisfy four rules:
- Every row contains exactly one star.
- Every column contains exactly one star.
- Every colored region contains exactly one star.
- Stars cannot touch each other, including diagonally.
If a star is placed in the center of a 3x3 area, all eight surrounding cells become impossible positions:
x x x x * x x x x
The no-touching rule is especially important because each confirmed star immediately eliminates nearby cells.
How to Play Star Battle
- Choose Normal or Hard and inspect the shapes of the colored regions.
- Mark cells that cannot contain a star because of row, column, region, or adjacency restrictions.
- Place a star when only one legal cell remains in a row, column, or region.
- After placing a star, eliminate every other cell in the same row, column, and region, plus all neighboring cells including diagonals.
- Continue chaining deductions until every row, column, and region contains exactly one star.
The Core Twist
Each cell belongs to three overlapping constraint systems: its row, its column, and its colored region. A position that appears possible under one rule may be eliminated by another.
For example, if a region has only two possible cells remaining and one of them touches an existing star, that cell is eliminated and the other position becomes forced.
This chain-reaction style of deduction is the main challenge of Star Battle.
Strategy Tips
Start with restricted regions
Look for small regions or regions squeezed into only a few rows or columns. They often have fewer legal star positions and can reveal early forced moves.
Mark impossible cells
Use elimination marks consistently. A nearly completed row, column, or region becomes much easier to read when impossible cells are already marked.
Remember diagonal contact
Two stars cannot touch at a corner. After every star placement, check all eight surrounding cells rather than only the four orthogonal neighbors.
Combine constraints
Do not solve colored regions in isolation. Row and column restrictions often eliminate candidates inside a region, while a region placement can complete a row or column.
Avoid unnecessary guessing
If two positions still appear possible, inspect how each would affect nearby rows, columns, and regions. The puzzle is intended to be solved through logical elimination.
Normal vs. Hard
CleverGoat offers Normal and Hard Star Battle puzzles. Both use the same core rules, while Hard puzzles generally require longer deduction chains and fewer immediately obvious placements.
Normal is a good starting point for new players. Hard is better suited to players already comfortable with adjacency elimination and multi-step logic.