How to solve Meowdoku, the cosy cat logic puzzle

Meowdoku is a small logic puzzle with a simple job: find a seat for every cat. The board is a square grid split into coloured regions, and you place one cat in each row, each column and each region, with no two cats touching. A new board arrives every day on Meowdoku, and the same rules power Star Battle and the Queens puzzle that many people play on LinkedIn. This guide covers the rules, the controls and the four techniques that solve every board, with screenshots from the game itself.

The rules of Meowdoku

There are only three rules, and they all have to hold at once:

• One cat per row and per column. A 7×7 board needs exactly seven cats.
• One cat per coloured region. Every region gets exactly one cat, however big or small it is.
• Cats never touch. Not side by side, and not diagonally either.

The no-touching rule is the one that makes Meowdoku interesting. Rows, columns and regions tell you where a cat can go; its neighbours tell you where another cat can never go, and together they squeeze the board down to a single answer.

How to play: cats, crosses and red cats

Tap an empty cell to place a cat. Tap it again and the cat becomes a cross (✕), the mark for a cell you know is empty, and a third tap clears it. On a computer, right-click places a cross straight away; on a phone, a long press does the same. Undo (or Ctrl+Z) takes back the last move, and Clear empties the board without stopping the clock. You can also move around the grid with the arrow keys and press X to toggle a cross.

Meowdoku has no hint button, but it will not let you break a rule without noticing. If two cats touch, or share a row, a column or a region, both turn red.

That second part matters: a cat that breaks no rule is never coloured, even if it is in the wrong place. The board only lights up when every cat is in the right spot, so the finish is always earned.

How to solve Meowdoku: four techniques

Every Meowdoku board can be finished with the four ideas below, used roughly in this order. You never need to place a cat and hope.

• Singles. If a row, column or region has only one cell left that could hold a cat, the cat goes there. Small regions in a corner are the usual place to start.
• Cross out around every cat. A cat rules out the rest of its row, its column and its region, plus the eight cells around it. Mark them all with ✕ straight away, so the next single is easy to see.
• Look one cat ahead. Before trusting a cell, ask what a cat there would cross out. If it would leave another row, column or region with no space at all, that cell must be empty.
• Count regions against rows. If two regions sit entirely inside the same two rows, those two rows already have their two cats, so every other cell in those rows can be crossed out. The same works with three regions and three rows, and with columns.

The first two techniques solve most of an easy 5×5 on their own. The look-ahead is where the medium boards start to fight back, and counting regions against rows is the trick that opens up a hard 9×9 when nothing else moves. If you know Star Battle, you will recognise all four; we wrote about the same family of puzzles in why every Star Battle puzzle has exactly one solution.

How we make sure you never have to guess

A logic puzzle with two possible answers is a broken puzzle, and so is one that can only be finished by trial and error. Every Meowdoku board is built and checked in four steps before you see it:

1. 1Seat the cats first. We place one cat in every row and column at random, with no two cats touching. That arrangement will be the answer.
2. 2Grow the regions around them. Each cat becomes the seed of a coloured region, and the regions spread into neighbouring empty cells until the board is full.
3. 3Reshape until there is one answer. If the regions allow more than one arrangement of cats, cells on the borders between regions are moved one at a time until only one arrangement fits.
4. 4Solve it like a person would. A solver then works through the board using only the four techniques above. If it gets stuck, the board is thrown away and a new one is started. From 6×6 up, no region may be a single cell.

Because the boards are built and checked in your browser, unlimited mode never runs out of puzzles.

The daily puzzle and unlimited boards

The daily Meowdoku is a 7×7 board, the same for everyone on the same date, and a new one arrives at midnight in your time zone. When you finish, the share card shows your time and a row of cats instead of the grid, so you can post your result without spoiling the puzzle for anyone else.

Unlimited mode offers three sizes: Easy 5×5 to learn the rules, Medium 7×7 like the daily, and Hard 9×9 for when you want a proper workout. An unfinished board is kept for each size, so you can switch between them and come back later.

The game plays in English, French and German, has a dark mode, and pauses the timer when you switch tabs. There is nothing to install and no account to create.

Try it yourself

Today’s board is waiting at meowdoku.gg. Start with the smallest region, cross out everything around each cat you place, and let the rows and columns do the rest. If you enjoy it, nonograms scratch the same itch with a picture at the end.