Meet Hounds & Hydrants, our free daily tents and trees puzzle. Give every fire hydrant its own dog, keep the dogs apart, and match every count.
Every board starts the same way: a scatter of fire hydrants, a row of numbers along the top, a column of numbers down the side, and not a single dog. By the end each hydrant has a hound sitting right beside it, no two hounds are close enough to sniff each other, and every count adds up.
Hounds & Hydrants is our daily tents and trees puzzle. If you know the grid game as Trees and Tents, Tents or Campsite, this is the same puzzle with a new cast: hydrants for the trees, dogs for the tents.
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Three rules:
Every board has exactly one answer, so every hound can be placed by deduction.
Tap a square once to place a hound, again to mark it as no hound, and a third time to clear it. On a desktop, right-click goes the other way, mark first. Drag along a row and every square you cross takes whatever the first square became, which is the quickest way to mark a long run.
The squares around a hound shade in on their own. Once a row or column has all its hounds, tap its number to mark the rest of that line. Two hounds that touch turn red. Tap a hydrant to tick it off once it has its hound, so you can see which ones are still waiting.
The puzzle builds through the week: an easy 8x8 on Monday and Tuesday, medium on Wednesday and Thursday, hard on Friday, then a bigger 10x10 at the weekend, medium on Saturday and hard on Sunday.
The clock is the score. A solve banks base points, a speed bonus, a flawless bonus if no hound ever stood on a wrong square, a bonus for solving without hints, and a bonus that grows through the week.
Check marks any mistake on the board. Hint shows the next step you can prove, names the technique and highlights the squares that prove it.
Missed a day? The archive holds every board since launch. A free account plays the last 7 days, and Greatest Games Plus opens the rest.
When a hydrant has only two open neighbours, look at the squares that touch both of them. Whichever neighbour gets the hound, those squares sit next to it, so they are out either way. Mark them, and the rows around the hydrant usually open up.
Finish the board and every hound trots over to its hydrant and lifts a leg. If you like this kind of thinking, try the rest of our free daily logic puzzles.
Hounds & Hydrants is live now.
The deductive click Sudoku gives you is not unique to Sudoku. Here is where to find it every day.
Twist 2×2 blocks of numbered tiles until the whole grid reads in order. Our daily rotation puzzle, in four sizes.
Forage exactly two mushrooms in every row, column, and colored region, with none touching. Our daily forest logic puzzle, in three timed sizes.
