If you've played this kind of puzzle before, you know the moment: the board is nearly clear, two covered tiles are left, and the clues can't tell them apart. You pick one and hope. Half the time you lose a game you played perfectly.
We didn't want that in Puppy Sweeper, especially for younger players. So every board you get is one that can be cleaned up with logic alone, from your very first tap.
Step 1: the first tap is always safe
The poops aren't placed until after your first tap. When they are, none go on the tile you tapped or the eight around it. So your first tap always opens a patch of the park, and you always have clues to start from.
Step 2: a solver checks the board
Before you see a board, the game plays it itself, using only the fly clues you'd see, with a small set of rules:
- One clue at a time. If a clue's number equals its covered tiles, they're all poops. If its poops are all found, the rest are safe.
- Two clues together. When two clues share covered tiles, the difference between their numbers can show that the tiles only one of them touches are all poops, or all safe.
- The total. At the end, the number of poops left can settle the last covered tiles.
Each time it finds a safe tile it opens it, just as you would, and keeps going. If it gets every safe tile open, the board is kept. If it ever gets stuck, the board is thrown away and a new one is dealt. It all happens before the board appears.
What that means for you
- There is always a safe move somewhere on the board, even when you can't see it yet.
- Stepping in a poop means a clue was misread, never bad luck. So the game offers "Try this board again" to have another go at the same board.
- The rules the solver uses are the same patterns in our guide to reading the clues, so a player who learns them can clear any board.
And the puppy?
The chase is different on purpose. The puppy moves a little unpredictably, usually towards the edge, and stops to sniff every second fence (every third in the Puppy Park, where the pond already blocks some of its way). We test the chase with a careful fencing strategy on every board size, and tune it so that strategy wins most chases but not all of them. A first-try catch is worth its third star.