Hounds & Hydrants: free daily tents and trees puzzle

What is Hounds & Hydrants?

Hounds & Hydrants is a tents and trees puzzle, the grid logic puzzle in the same family as sudoku and Queens. The grid starts with fire hydrants already in place, and you work out where the hounds go. If you know the puzzle as Tents and Trees, Trees and Tents, Tents, or Campsite, it is the same game with a new cast. There are three rules:

• Every hydrant gets its own hound, directly above, below, left, or right of it. A hound can stand beside two hydrants, but it belongs to just one.
• Hounds never touch each other, not even at the corners.
• The numbers outside the grid say how many hounds each row and column holds.

That is all of it. What makes it hard is how the rules lean on each other: rule out one square and you can end up forcing a hound three rows away. Every puzzle has exactly one solution, so there is always a next move you can prove, and you never have to guess. You don't need an account to play.

Your daily puzzle

The puzzle builds through the week: an easy 8×8 on Monday and Tuesday, medium on Wednesday and Thursday, hard on Friday, then a bigger 10×10 at the weekend, medium on Saturday and hard on Sunday. Everyone gets the same board, so you can compare times with friends, and solving every day builds your streak. A free Greatest Games account keeps your stats across devices.

Missed a day? The archive holds every puzzle since launch. A free account plays the last 7 days, and Greatest Games Plus opens the rest.

How to play Hounds & Hydrants

Read the counts first. A row or column marked 0 holds no hounds, so mark every square in it. Then look for hydrants with only one open neighbour: that neighbour has to be the hound. After each hound, the eight squares around it are out, and the board shades them for you. When a line needs as many hounds as it has open squares, fill them all. Keep going until every hydrant has its hound, and then watch what the hounds do next.

Controls

• Tap a square once to place a hound. Tap again to mark it as no hound. A third tap clears it.
• Right-click (desktop) cycles the other way, so the mark comes first.
• A drag gives every square it crosses what the first square became. Drag from a marked square along a row or column to mark the whole run in one stroke.
• Tap a hydrant to tick it off once it has its hound, so you can see which hydrants are still waiting. Tap it again to clear the tick. It is your own note: the game never checks it.
• The squares around a hound shade in by themselves. 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 straight away.
• Check highlights mistakes. Hint walks you through the next logical step, naming the technique so you learn it for next time.

Tips for solving without guessing

Start from the edges and the zeros. Zero lines and hydrants against the edge have the fewest options. Clear them first and the middle of the grid usually opens up.

Count spaces, not just hounds. Most people get stuck on a row that still needs two hounds and has four open squares. Hounds can't stand side by side, so look at how those four squares are spaced. Often only one arrangement works.

A hydrant can touch two hounds but owns only one. If a neighbouring hydrant has already claimed a hound, that hound can't serve a second hydrant. When a corner of the grid looks ambiguous, work out which hound belongs to which hydrant.

Find the squares that touch every option. When a hydrant's hound could go in either of two neighbours, any square that touches both of them is out either way.

Let the hint teach you. A hint names the technique it is using and highlights the squares that prove it. The next time that pattern shows up, you will spot it yourself.