Quackle

Quackle carries the tagline printed under its title: life in the pond, emptiness at the edge. The grid is seven by seven and is divided into lettered ponds, A, B, C and so on, each bearing in its corner the number of ducks it must hold. Two rules, which the site summarizes better than anyone: within the same pond, the ducks form a single connected group; from one pond to another, they never touch by a side. A DUCKS counter at the top of the board compares ducks placed to the total required, and that total is exactly the sum of the numbers written on the ponds. Three buttons under the grid: Check, Clear and Reveal solution.

1. Read the number written in the corner of each pond: it's the number of ducks it must contain.
2. Place a duck by touching a square, remove it by touching it again.
3. Check that the ducks in the same pond form a single group, each touching another from above, below, left or right.
4. Check that along the green borders no duck touches a duck from another pond by a side. Corner contact, however, is allowed.
5. Press Check to have the grid checked, Clear to erase everything, Reveal solution to give up.

Two rules, seven by seven, ducks: Quackle has the good taste to fit on a postcard and still be a challenge. The real pleasure comes from the double reading of the borders, where you try both to solidify your own group and to leave a void facing the neighbor, so that each boundary square is negotiated twice. And the DUCKS counter, which is nothing more than the sum of the pond numbers, tells you from the start how many ducks will have to be fitted: it's reassuring and it's terrible.

Checking is done via the Check button, whose rules page on the site explains the meaning of the messages. The site's Play button leads to another puzzle from the same maker. The board itself opens on a starting state, with a few ducks already placed and the DUCKS counter comparing them to the total the ponds require.

Daily Quackle

The grid of the day, with its DUCKS counter and its ducks already placed.

Archive

The site indicates that older Quackles remain playable, and an Archive link appears in the footer.

Hints

For the current grid, the site offers three progressive nudges it presents as non-spoiling.

• At the edge of a pond, the diagonal is a refuge: two ducks from different ponds can touch at a corner, never by a side. Border squares should therefore be read diagonally.
• The example carousel makes this clear: the dark blue ducks are pre-placed and lock their squares. They are the anchor points of their pond, since all other ducks will have to attach to them step by step.
• A pond that requires only one duck has no internal constraint, but it still forbids neighboring ponds the four squares adjacent to that duck.