Daily number logic
Squirrels.
Squirrels hide acorns in the hollows. Each sign tells how many acorns are in the run of hollows to its right or below it. Every hollow holds 1 to 9 acorns, and no number repeats within a run.
The wood for Wednesday 17 December 2025: medium, eight by eight. Exactly one solution.
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01
Rules.
Three sentences. The rest is practice.
How to play
Squirrels hide acorns in the hollows. Each sign tells how many acorns are in the run of hollows to its right or below it. Every hollow holds 1 to 9 acorns, and no number repeats within a run.
A run is the unbroken line of hollows that follows a sign, and it ends at the next trunk or at the edge of the wood. Every hollow belongs to one run across and one run down at the same time, and that is where the puzzle lives: the number you write has to suit both.
Every wood has exactly one arrangement of acorns that fits every sign. When the last hollow is right, the game notices by itself.
Controls
Tap or click a hollow to pick it, then a number from the pad under the wood. Tapping the same number again takes it back, so the way out is always one tap away. Hold and drag from a hollow that already holds a number to write that same number into the empty hollows you pass. Nothing lights up while you play: finding a mistake is part of the puzzle.
Notes switches the pad to the small numbers you keep while you think; a number written for real clears the notes it rules out. Holding a pad number for half a second writes it the other way round, so you can drop a real number in without leaving notes, or pencil one in without entering them. Check first tells you only how many numbers are wrong and which rows or columns they sit in; press it again and it marks them. Hint names the rule and the place without giving the number away, and the second press writes that one number and explains it. If something on the board is already wrong, the hint points there first. Hints and checks are free and counted, and shown when you finish. Clear empties the wood; the clock keeps running and one Undo brings everything back.
Keyboard: arrows move from hollow to hollow, 1 to 9 write a number, Shift plus a number writes it the other way round, a note while notes are off and a real number while they are on, N or Enter switches notes on and off, Delete or Backspace empties the hollow, Escape lets it go, U or Ctrl+Z undo, R or Ctrl+R redo, P pauses.
The clock runs from your first number to the last hollow and pauses when you leave the tab or sit still for a minute, which also hides the wood. Your progress, time, history and day streak stay in this browser, and in your account when you are signed in, so you can continue on another device. The day turns over at midnight where you are. Only the wood of the day counts towards the streak, the archive is for practice; once you are five days in, a single missed day is forgiven, at most twice a month.
The week
Monday and Tuesday are easy (six by six), Wednesday and Thursday medium (eight by eight), Friday and Saturday hard (ten by ten) and Sunday is the challenge: twelve by twelve. The week strip under the wood takes you to the other days; the archive goes back a year, and the practice sets have eight woods of each level with no date attached.
Difficulty is measured, not guessed. Every wood is solved by a program that only knows named rules, in three layers: the plain ones (the last empty hollow of a run, a total that can be made in only one way, and the single number that both crossing runs still allow), the patterns inside a run (a number the run has to use that fits only one hollow, a pair of hollows holding two numbers between them, a total narrowed down by the crossing runs), and the hard one (writing a number in and dropping it because it runs into a contradiction). Easy and Medium never need that third layer; Sunday leans on it the most.
A few ways in
Short runs with extreme totals are the way in. Two hollows adding to 3 can only be 1 and 2; to 4, only 1 and 3; to 16, only 7 and 9; to 17, only 8 and 9. Three hollows adding to 6 are 1, 2 and 3; to 24, they are 7, 8 and 9.
Where two such runs cross, the hollow they share has to suit both sets, and often only one number is in both.
When a run has one empty hollow left, its number is simply the total minus what is already there. That one number then narrows the run crossing it, which is how a wood unravels.
If a number the run must use fits only one of its hollows, that is where it goes, even when that hollow could still hold other numbers on its own.