Dormice: a daily logic grid puzzle you solve from the clues alone

ARLing s. r. o. · 17 September 2026

The grid is a notepad, not the answer

The grid is your notepad. Each small square joins one item on the left with one item above: a cross when you know the two do not belong together, a tick when you know they do. Two marks carry the whole puzzle.

The board is a staircase of small tables, with dormice against stores, stores against trees and, in the bigger puzzles, the weeks as well. It stops at twelve columns on purpose: at 390 px of screen a square is then about 29 px across, above the 24 px a finger needs.

One tick, and the rest of the table follows

As soon as a tick goes into a square, every other square in that row and in that column of the same small table is a cross, because each item belongs to one dormouse and to no other.

Ticks also carry from table to table. If Pip keeps the sloes and the sloes are in the elm, then Pip woke in the elm, and anything the sloes are not, Pip is not either. The clue you need is often not about the pair you are looking at.

Order clues work on the week column: the weeks run in order, one week apart, so two weeks earlier means exactly two steps along that column, and earlier without a number means any number of steps.

Auto cross is on, carry across is off

After a tick you would write in crosses for a while, and with four categories of four items that is 72 crosses for 24 ticks, which is bookkeeping rather than deduction. Auto cross fills them in and is on by default, a recorded deviation from our own controls standard where automatic helpers are off; the whole filling is one step in the Undo history and the switch sits in Settings.

Carry across, the transfer of consequences between tables, stays off by default, because that step is a deduction you have not seen yourself.

Monday is easy, Sunday is not bigger but harder

Monday and Tuesday are easy: three categories of five, no weeks, clues that match or rule out a pair outright. Wednesday and Thursday are medium, four categories of four, with the weeks and the first order clues. Friday and Saturday are hard, the same shape with at most one outright match. Sunday is the challenge: no outright matches, and one square that gives way only when you test an assumption until a clue breaks.

Hard and Sunday are not bigger than Wednesday, they are harder, and that order is measured: the solver counts how many steps of each kind a finished puzzle needs, and the candidates for a date are ranked by that number.

Free archive, practice sets and a hint that stops

Hint and Check both work in two steps and are free. The first press of Hint names the technique and the table without the value, the second fills in exactly one square and stops there; the first press of Check says how many of your ticks are wrong and which table they are in, the second marks them, and nothing turns red while you play.

The practice sets hold twenty four copses with no date attached, three sets of eight for each level, and the archive holds every daily copse since 10 September 2025, free; your own times and hints stay in your browser.

Frequently asked questions

Pick today's copse on the games page

Open the ARLing games page, pick today's Dormice copse and start with a clue that names two items outright, because the tick it gives you brings a row and a column of crosses with it. The Dormice archive is free and goes back to 10 September 2025.