Strategy guide

Six techniques solve every valid board. They are listed in the order a human should try them — which is also exactly the ladder MeowSolver's hint engine climbs, so each article explains a hint you will actually see.

The ladder

1. Mark the crosses — every cat casts a shadow. Write it down before doing anything else. (Reflex level)
2. Forced moves — a row, column, or region with one square left is a free cat. (Beginner)
3. Confinement & locked sets — when a region is trapped inside one line, the rest of that line dies. (Intermediate)
4. The row & column squeeze — a line down to a few squares packed together kills every square that touches all of them. (Advanced)
5. The color squeeze — a square is impossible if placing a cat there would suffocate another region. (Advanced)
6. What-if chains — suppose a cat, follow the dominoes, reach a contradiction. The technique of last resort. (Expert)

Playing a double-cat board?

Some games double everything: two cats per row, column, and color — Duckdoku’s double duck levels, classic 2★ Star Battle. The ladder changes more than you’d think (the very first rule above is wrong there), so it has its own guide: the double-cat strategy guide.

Going deeper

Once the ladder is second nature, these guides sharpen the parts technique alone doesn’t cover — where to look first, how to catch your own mistakes, and what to do when a board fights back:

• Reading a fresh board — where the first deduction comes from on an empty grid, before any crosses exist.
• Common mistakes — the five errors that actually ruin boards, and the habits that catch them one mark deep.
• Do these puzzles ever require guessing? — why every board is solvable by logic, yet some generated boards still cross the line of what a human would find.

The golden rule

Never guess. Every square you mark should have a one-sentence justification you could say out loud. If you cannot say the sentence, go back down the ladder — there is always a simpler deduction hiding somewhere, and hunting for it is the actual game.

Stuck on a real board right now? Import a screenshot and the hint engine will find the lowest rung of the ladder that applies to your exact position.