You get a patch of ice split into colored floes. Your job is to place penguins: exactly two in every row, two in every column and two on every floe.
- Penguins like their space, so no two penguins may touch. All eight fields around a penguin stay empty, corners included.
- Dark fields are holes in the ice. Nobody can stand there and they belong to no floe. Rows and columns are counted over the ice only.
- Boards are not always square blocks. The outline changes from day to day: a ring, a cross, a terrace, an hourglass. The rules stay the same.
Tap a field to cycle through the three states: empty, a cross for "no penguin here", and a penguin. One tap marks, two taps place a penguin, exactly as in other puzzles of this kind. The cross is just your own note and never changes the puzzle. Placing a penguin on a field that is not part of the solution counts as a mistake: the penguin stays until you take it back, and the counter next to the clock goes up.
Auto crosses
Once a penguin is placed, the fields it blocks are marked for you: the eight neighbours, and the rest of a row, column or floe as soon as it has both of its penguins. It saves a lot of tapping. If you would rather mark everything yourself, turn it off with the Auto crosses switch under the board. The choice is remembered on your device.
Clock and hints
The clock starts with your first move and stops when the last penguin is in place. A hint costs 30 seconds added to your time. If there is a wrong penguin on the board, the hint points at it; otherwise it places one correct penguin for you. Mistakes are shown next to your time but do not change it.
No guessing, ever
Every puzzle here has exactly one solution and can be reached by pure logic, with no trial and error. The reasoning for today's board, step by step, is written out on the answer page.
Also known as
You may have met this puzzle before under another name. The logic behind it is Star Battle, created by Hans Eendebak for the 2003 World Puzzle Championship and printed as Two Not Touch in the New York Times. Twinguin is our own take on it: two penguins per floe instead of one, boards that are rarely square, and a new puzzle every day.