Most broken Tents grids come from one of six mistakes, and the biggest is placing a tent before it’s certain. The others come from the rules: a tent diagonal to its tree, two trees sharing a tent, tents touching at a corner, grass left unmarked, and trees counted in a row’s number. Each one is below, with how to spot it.
If you’re new, the rules and how to solve pages explain the ideas these mistakes go wrong on.
1. Placing a tent before it’s certain
When a tree has two or three squares left, it’s tempting to pick one and see. We took every one of the game’s levels, put a tent in the first square beside a tree that should be grass (choosing one that broke no rule yet), and kept making honest moves until the game showed a red mark:
| Track | Red mark appeared | Moves before it (median) | Longest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy 6×6 | 47 of 50 | 5 | 11 |
| Medium 8×8 | 50 of 50 | 8 | 20 |
| Hard 10×10 | 50 of 50 | 9 | 26 |
On the other three Easy levels, the red mark never appeared: the honest moves ran out first. Here’s one on Medium level 3, with a wrong tent in row 1, column 5:
Five honest moves later, column 7 can no longer reach its number, two columns away from the wrong tent.
How to avoid it: only place a tent when a technique makes it certain. If a tree could still have its tent in more than one place, work somewhere else.
2. A tent diagonal to its tree
A tent has to share a side with its tree: left, right, above or below. A tent at a tree’s corner doesn’t count, and a tent with no tree beside it at all breaks the rules.
How to avoid it: when you place a tent, point to its tree. If you can only find one at a corner, it’s in the wrong place.
3. Two trees sharing a tent
A tent between two trees can only belong to one of them. The other still needs a tent of its own, which is why there are always exactly as many tents as trees.
How to avoid it: when two trees are close together, make sure each has its own tent. Count the tents against the trees as you go.
4. Tents touching at a corner
Tents can’t touch at all, and that includes diagonally. It’s easy to miss when you’re placing tents along a row.
How to avoid it: every time you place a tent, mark all the squares around it as grass, corners included.
5. Not marking grass
About three quarters of the squares settled on the game’s levels are grass. Without them marked, you can’t see when a row has just enough room left, or when a tree has only one square left.
How to avoid it: start every puzzle by marking every square with no tree beside it as grass, and keep marking as you go.
6. Counting trees in a row’s number
A row’s number counts tents only. Trees take up squares, but they never count, and they can never hold a tent.
How to avoid it: when you count a line’s open squares, skip the trees as well as the grass.
How to recover from a mistake
- A red number or a red ring means a rule is broken, but the mistake may be elsewhere, sometimes a few moves back. Undo to the last move you were sure of.
- Press Stuck? It rings a wrong square before anything else, so you know exactly where.
- Stuck with no red mark? Count every row and column again, then look at when you get stuck.