Are these evil fleet hunt free to print?

Yes. Generate the puzzle above and print it with its answer, at no cost and with no sign-up.

Does every puzzle have one solution?

Yes. The numbers alone almost never pin a fleet, so the revealed squares are what close the gap, and every board is checked to hide exactly one fleet before it prints. The answer is on the second page.

Can I make a Fleet Hunt book to sell on KDP?

Yes. The free tool makes one puzzle. The KDP Fleet Hunt maker generates hundreds of graded puzzles at any KDP trim, as a print-ready 300 DPI interior and solutions PDF.

Free printable

Evil Fleet Hunt

An evil Fleet Hunt is a twelve by twelve sea hiding twelve ships, twenty-nine squares of them, with thirteen squares revealed. Almost nothing is forced at the start, and the first foothold is usually a line numbered zero or one whose squares are nearly all spoken for.

Difficulty

A bigger fleet in a bigger sea is harder, and harder grades reveal less of it. Every puzzle hides exactly one fleet.

12×12 sea, 12 ships. Ships never touch, and the numbers count the ship squares in each row and column. The fleet to find is printed under the grid.

Two pages: the puzzle and its answer. Every puzzle is proved to have exactly one answer by the same engine as our KDP studio.

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Fleet Hunt Evil

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Fleet Hunt Evil · Solution

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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

1Cross 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.
2Work 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.
3Place 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.
4Check 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.

Making a whole Fleet Hunt book?

This page makes one puzzle. To publish a book on Amazon KDP, the KDP Fleet Hunt maker generates hundreds of graded puzzles at any trim, as a print-ready 300 DPI interior and solutions PDF.

More printable battleship puzzles

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Questions

Are these evil fleet hunt free to print?: Yes. Generate the puzzle above and print it with its answer, at no cost and with no sign-up.
Does every puzzle have one solution?: Yes. The numbers alone almost never pin a fleet, so the revealed squares are what close the gap, and every board is checked to hide exactly one fleet before it prints. The answer is on the second page.
Can I make a Fleet Hunt book to sell on KDP?: Yes. The free tool makes one puzzle. The KDP Fleet Hunt maker generates hundreds of graded puzzles at any KDP trim, as a print-ready 300 DPI interior and solutions PDF.