Introducing Heyawake

What Is Heyawake?

Heyawake is played on a square grid divided into bold-outlined rectangular regions. Some regions carry a number. Your job is to shade the correct black cells while every white cell stays connected and every rule holds.

Four rules govern the board:

• Region counts. A numbered region contains exactly that many black cells. The number cell counts toward its own total. Unnumbered regions have no fixed count.
• Black spacing. Black cells can never share an edge. They may touch diagonally.
• White connection. Every white cell belongs to one connected group across the whole board, joined through shared edges.
• Two-region runs. A straight horizontal or vertical run of white cells cannot pass through three or more regions.

"Every number is a promise about its own region, but the white cells have to agree with each other across the entire board."

How to Solve It

Start with the easy promises. A clue of 0 makes its whole region white. A one-cell region with clue 1 is black. Once a region has its full count of black cells, everything else in that region is white.

Then let the rules feed each other. A black cell forces its four neighbors white. A straight white line reaching for a third region tells you exactly where a black breaker must sit. When a white cell is about to be sealed off, the escape route must stay white. "You are never just counting, you are keeping the white cells alive."

Heyawake is check-only. Nothing is flagged while you solve. Press Check when you think the board is done, and a failed check never reveals a cell, counts as a mistake, or ends your attempt.

Why We Built It

Heyawake rewards a different muscle than our number puzzles. There is no arithmetic, only placement and connection reasoning that spans the full grid. A single black cell can ripple outward through spacing, region counts, and connectivity all at once. Larger boards tighten those constraints, so medium and hard puzzles ask you to hold several threads of logic together before committing.

We also gave it a calmer input model. Every cell starts gray. Tapping cycles it white, then black, then back to gray, so white marks stay an optional aid rather than busywork.

Launch Details

Heyawake launches in on Puzzle Lair with easy 6x6, medium 8x8, and hard 10x10 boards. It is check-only, mobile-first, and tracks your times for per-difficulty leaderboards and personal bests.