---
title: "Printable battleship puzzles: free, with answers | Once Books"
description: "Free printable battleship puzzles. A fleet is hidden in the sea, ships never touch, and the numbers count the ship squares in each line. Every puzzle hides exactly one fleet, and prints with its answer."
source: "https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt"
---

Free printables

# Free printable Fleet Hunt with answers

A Fleet Hunt is solitaire battleships with a pencil. A known fleet is hidden in the sea, no two ships touch even at a corner, the numbers beside each row and column count the ship squares in that line, and a few squares are revealed to start you off. The fleet is printed under every grid, because knowing what is left to find is half the solve.

## By size

A bigger fleet in a bigger sea is what makes a Fleet Hunt harder, and the harder grades reveal less of it too. Measured as the search it takes to prove the answer unique, the top grade is over three hundred times the first.

- [Easy Fleet Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt/easy) — Free printable easy battleship puzzles with answers. A small sea, six ships, and enough revealed to get moving. Print with the answer. No sign-up.
- [Medium Fleet Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt/medium) — Free printable medium battleship puzzles with answers. An eight by eight sea with seven ships, where the numbers do more of the work.
- [Fleet Hunt with the standard fleet](https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt/standard-fleet) — Free printable battleship puzzles with the classic ten by ten fleet: one of four, two of three, three of two and four single submarines.
- [Hard Fleet Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt/hard) — Free printable hard battleship puzzles with answers. An eleven by eleven sea, eleven ships including a five, and only a tenth of it revealed.
- [Evil Fleet Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt/evil) — Free printable evil battleship puzzles with answers. The biggest sea and fleet we print, with barely a tenth revealed. Still exactly one fleet.

## By audience

Most people already know the game, which makes this an unusually easy logic puzzle to hand someone, and the version with a pencil never ends on a lucky guess.

- [Fleet Hunt for beginners](https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt/for-beginners) — Free printable battleship puzzles for beginners with answers. Learn the three moves on a small sea, with the answer on page two.
- [Fleet Hunt with the fleet printed](https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt/with-fleet-key) — Free printable battleship puzzles that print the fleet under every grid, so you always know what you are looking for.
- [Large print Fleet Hunt](https://www.oncebooks.com/fleet-hunt/large-print) — Free printable large print battleship puzzles with answers. A small sea printed big, for easy reading. No sign-up.

## One fleet, every time

This is the guarantee that takes real work here. The numbers alone almost never pin a fleet: measured on a bare eight by eight board with nothing revealed, only 9 layouts in 200 were fixed by their counts, because two identical ships can usually swap places without moving a single number. The revealed squares are what close that gap, and the generator takes them away one at a time for exactly as long as the board still hides one fleet and no other. Every puzzle here is checked by the same solver our Publisher Studio uses. The answer prints at the back.

## How to solve a fleet hunt

A whole fleet is hidden in the sea. Ships never touch, not even at a corner, the numbers beside each row and column count the ship cells in that line, and a few squares are revealed to start you off.

### The method

1. Cross out the zeros, then fill the full lines. A row or column numbered 0 is all water. A line whose number equals the squares it has left is all ship. Both are free information and both usually settle a corner of the board straight away.
2. Work outward from every revealed square. A revealed square tells you more about its neighbours than about itself. The four diagonals of any ship square are always water, because a ship runs straight and no two ships touch. A round end points at open water on its curved side and at the rest of its ship on the flat one. A single is surrounded by water on all eight sides.
3. Place the biggest ship first. The longest ship has the fewest places it can possibly go, and every square it takes puts a ring of water around it that the smaller ships cannot use. Work down the fleet by size and cross each ship off as you find it.
4. Check a line can still reach its number. If a row still wants three ship squares but only two are left that any ship could use, something earlier is wrong. That check catches a mistake several moves before the board visibly contradicts itself.

**The one rule people get wrong**

Ships never touch, and that includes corner to corner. A square diagonally next to a ship is always water, which is the single most useful fact on the board.

**What the answer page shows**

The whole fleet, drawn in place on the same grid.

**How the grades differ**

A bigger fleet in a bigger sea, with less of it revealed. The numbers alone almost never pin a fleet, so the revealed squares are what make the puzzle solvable, and the harder grades give you fewer.

**Good for**

Anyone who likes working from a few fixed points outward.

## Make one now

Pick a sea, then print the puzzle and its answer. No sign-up, no watermark.

[Open the Fleet Hunt generator](https://www.oncebooks.com/tools/fleet-hunt-generator)[Make a whole book for KDP](https://www.oncebooks.com/kdp-fleet-hunt-maker)