About Tent Camp
Tents and trees is a pairing puzzle. Every tree in the grid needs exactly one tent pitched directly above, below, left or right of it — never diagonally — and every tent belongs to exactly one tree. The counts along the top and side say how many tents each line holds. The constraint that makes it interesting is that no two tents may touch, including at the corners, so a tent placed in the wrong square quietly poisons the squares around it.
Boards are generated daily and verified to have a single solution before they are served, so the puzzle never asks you to guess between two equally legal camps.
Each board is an eight-by-eight camp with eight trees and eight tents. The edge counts describe tent cells, not trees, so a tree beside a counted row is not automatically part of that row’s total.
Strategy tips
- Zero rows are free information. Cross off every square in a line whose count is 0, and the trees bordering it lose an option each.
- A tree with only one legal neighbour left is a solved tree. Place that tent, then immediately grass over its eight surrounding squares.
- Count from the other side too. If a line needs three tents and only three squares remain legal, all three are tents regardless of which trees claim them.
- Watch pairs of trees that share a single candidate square. They cannot both use it, so whichever tree has another option must take that other option.
- Grass is a real move: marking ruled-out squares stops you rediscovering a dead end.
Controls
Tap or click an empty square to cycle it between tent, grass and blank. Trees are fixed. Use Check to highlight any tent that has no tree to belong to.
For more never-touch placement, try Bimaru Fleet or the Queens Puzzle.