Logic Grid Puzzles

Logic Grid Puzzles gives you an endless supply of zebra-style logic puzzles to solve in your browser. Each one sets up a small scene, such as neighbors on a street, bakers at a village bake-off or residents of an apartment tower, and gives you a list of clues. Your job is to work out who goes with what: which person owns which pet, drinks which drink and lives in which house. Every puzzle is generated fresh, has exactly one solution and needs no guessing. Play free online, with no download or sign-up, on desktop or phone.

How to play

The grid has one block for every pair of categories. Each cell asks one question, such as “Is Ava the cat owner?”

• Mark what you know. Tap a cell once for ✗ (these two don’t go together), again for ✓ (same person), and a third time to clear it.
• One ✓ per row and column. With Auto ✗ switched on, placing a ✓ crosses out the rest of its row and column in that block, and removing the ✓ takes those crosses back.
• Read order clues carefully. One category is always in order: houses numbered left to right, floors from the bottom up, or morning time slots. “Directly left of” means the very next house, while “somewhere left of” can be any house further left. “Next door to” works in either direction.
• Either/or clues. “Kira either wears the gray apron or comes from Stonebay, but not both” means exactly one of the two is true, so the baker in the gray apron and the baker from Stonebay must be different people.
• Cross off used clues. Tap a clue to strike it through once you’ve got everything out of it.

The puzzle is solved when every ✓ is in place. Undo takes back any move, Check highlights wrong marks in red, and Reveal fills in the answer if you give up (a revealed puzzle doesn’t count as solved).

Difficulty levels and the daily puzzle

• Easy (3×3): three categories of three. A good way to learn the grid.
• Medium (4×4): four categories of four, with either/or clues.
• Hard (5×5): four categories of five, the size of a classic magazine logic puzzle.
• Expert (5×5, five categories): the full zebra puzzle layout, with ten blocks to fill.

The daily puzzle is the same for everyone on a given date. It is Medium on Mondays and Tuesdays, Hard from Wednesday to Saturday and Expert on Sundays. Solve it each day to build a streak. Progress, best times and your streak are saved in your browser, so you can resume later.

Hints that teach

Stuck? Hint finds the next deduction you can make from the clues and your current marks, and explains it in plain English. For example: “The cat owner can only be in house 2 or 3, so Ava can’t be in house 4 or 5.” The cell is highlighted, and you can press Apply to place the mark or work it out yourself. If any of your marks are wrong, the hint tells you that first, because no safe step follows from a wrong mark.

Tips for solving logic grid puzzles

• Start with direct clues. Plain “is” and “isn’t” clues go straight onto the grid.
• Every clue that compares two people splits them up. If the tea drinker lives left of Ben, the tea drinker isn’t Ben. That’s a free ✗.
• Use the edges. Nobody can live left of the first house, so a “left of” clue rules out the last house for one person and the first house for the other.
• Carry facts across blocks. If Ava owns the cat and the cat owner doesn’t drink tea, then Ava doesn’t drink tea. Most hard deductions are chains like this.

FAQ

What is a zebra puzzle?

It’s another name for a logic grid puzzle. It comes from the well-known Zebra Puzzle, which asks which of five neighbors owns the zebra. It’s sometimes called Einstein’s puzzle, though there’s no evidence he wrote it. The puzzles here use their own original scenes and clues.

Does every puzzle have a unique solution?

Yes. The generator picks a random answer, adds clues until its solver can prove that answer is the only one, then removes any clue that isn’t needed. Every puzzle can be finished with the same step-by-step logic the Hint button uses.

Can I play on a phone?

Yes. Drag the grid to scroll it, tap cells to mark them, and use the + and − buttons to resize the cells. On a keyboard, arrow keys move around the grid, Space cycles a cell, X and C place ✗ and ✓, and Z undoes.

Like number logic too? Try Sudoku, or crack a hidden code by deduction in Mastermind.