Nurikabe

ISLANDS & SEA

Tap cycles shade → dot → clear; drag to paint a run.

ISLANDS & SEA

Nurikabe

An island can take almost any shape, and the number of shapes grows fast with size — past a handful of cells, there's no realistic list left to check, unlike Cell Blocks' neat rectangles. So the puzzle works by connectivity instead: track which cells each clue could still reach, and let the sea's own rule — always connected, never a 2×2 block — box the islands in from outside.

RULES

  • Each number is an island of exactly that many unshaded cells.
  • Islands never touch side by side.
  • The sea is one connected region and never fills a 2×2 square.

CONTROLS

  • Tap cycles shade → dot → clear; drag to paint a run.
  • Arrow keys move the cursor; space or enter cycles a cell through sea, dot and clear.
constructing a layout…

Related: Arbour, another connectivity puzzle that grows a tree instead of a sea, and Kirchhoff, where a global connectivity rule does the same work a search would otherwise have to do.