⛵ How to play Battleship
By Miguel Arechaga
Battleship is a classic of logic and probability: you can't see the enemy board, only the result of your shots. With a bit of method you can sink the entire fleet in far fewer attempts than firing at random.
What is Battleship?
The enemy fleet (5 ships of different sizes) is hidden on an 8x8 board. Your goal is to locate and sink it by firing cell by cell, with the fewest possible shots.
How to play, step by step
- Click a cell on the board to fire.
- If you hit, you'll see fire 🔥; if you miss, a splash 💧.
- When you sink an entire ship, its cells are marked as sunk ⚓.
- You win when you sink all 5 ships in the fleet (one of 4 cells, two of 3, and two of 2).
- Your best score (fewest shots) is saved as your record.
Strategy: fire in a checkerboard pattern
Firing at random is inefficient because the smallest ship occupies 2 consecutive cells: if you follow an alternating-cell pattern (like the black squares on a chessboard), it's impossible for a ship to slip through without touching at least one of your cells, since no ship can fit between two gaps without brushing the pattern. This drastically cuts down the number of "blind" shots you need.
As soon as you land a hit, switch modes: drop the pattern and try the four adjacent cells (up, down, left, right) to find the ship's orientation. Once you know whether it runs horizontally or vertically, follow that line until you sink it completely before going back to the general pattern.
Quick tips
- Never fire at a cell that's already marked; it gives you no new information.
- Ships never touch each other, so a water cell surrounding a sunk ship rules out that whole area.
- Start near the center of the board: statistically there are more ways for a ship to pass through there than through the corners.
With the firing pattern and hunting by adjacency, you'll lower your personal best game after game.
Play online with 2 players
You can play Battleship against another person in several ways: press "🌐 Online" and create a room to share a 4-letter code with whoever you want to challenge, use "🔍 Find opponent" to have the system instantly match you with another available player, or add a friend by their username from the 👥 Friends panel (while signed in) and press "Challenge" next to their name to invite them directly to a match.
🏆 Wins ranking
All your online Battleship matches are recorded on your account: every win (and every loss) adds to your history. Go to Ranking, the 🎮 2 Players tab, choose "Battleship" from the dropdown, and check your position against other players, synced across all your devices. For your result to count you need a free account on MundoSudoku (just a username and password, no email required): you can play without one, but without signing in your score isn't saved to the ranking.
