How to Play the Starstruck Game
Starstruck is a Star Battle logic puzzle: place stars on a grid so every row, column, and colored region holds exactly one, and no two stars ever touch. This guide covers the rules, the controls, and the strategy that makes hard boards fall apart.
The board
A Starstruck puzzle is a square grid divided into colored regions. An N×N board always has exactly N regions, and it takes N stars to solve. The daily 5×5 has five regions and five stars; the 10×10 has ten of each. Every region is a single connected block of cells, and the colors are only there to show you where each region begins and ends.
The rules
There are just two rules, and together they make the whole puzzle:
- One star per line and region. Every row, every column, and every colored region must contain exactly one star — no more, no fewer.
- Stars never touch. No two stars may sit in adjacent cells, including diagonally. Each star is alone in the eight cells surrounding it.
Every puzzle on this site is generated to have exactly one solution, so you never have to guess — the answer is always reachable by pure logic.
The controls
There are two marks you can place in a cell — a cross (this cell cannot hold a star) and a star — and both work on touchscreens and with a mouse:
- Tap to cycle. Tap an empty cell once to place a cross, tap again to turn it into a star, and tap a third time to clear it. This is the same cross → star → clear order used by Netflix's Starstruck.
- Swipe to mark. Press and drag across a run of cells to quickly mark or clear crosses. The first cell you touch decides whether the swipe adds crosses or clears them, and the rest of the drag follows suit.
- Auto-cross. When you place a star, the cells that can no longer hold a star — its whole row, its whole column, its region, and its eight neighbors — are crossed out for you. You can turn this off with the toggle under the board if you prefer to mark everything yourself.
Hints, undo, and reset
Three controls sit above every board. Hint reveals one correct star from the solution and counts toward your stats; it is the fastest way to restart a stalled board. Undo steps back your most recent action, which is handy when a placement leads to a dead end. Reset clears the whole board so you can start fresh. If you place a star that breaks a rule, the offending stars pulse red so you can spot the conflict at a glance.
Winning and sharing
You win the moment all the stars are placed legally — one per row, column, and region, with none touching. The board shows your finish time, how many hints you used, and your current daily streak; completing any daily size keeps the streak alive for that day. A share button copies a compact, spoiler-free emoji grid of your result to the clipboard, showing the region colors and where your stars landed without giving the puzzle away.
Strategy tips
These are the quick pointers. For a deeper walkthrough of the solving techniques — exclusion around stars, regions trapped in a single line, counting regions against rows, and cancelling touching candidates — read the full Starstruck strategy guide.
Cross out before you star
The heart of Star Battle is eliminating cells, not placing stars. Every time you prove a cell cannot hold a star, mark it with a cross. Stars fall out on their own once a row, column, or region has only one open cell left.
Fence off every star
A star forbids a star in all eight surrounding cells, plus the rest of its row, its column, and its region. Turn auto-cross on and those exclusions are drawn for you, instantly shrinking the board around each placement.
Corner a region into one line
If every cell of a colored region sits in a single row (or a single column), that row's star must be inside the region — so no other region can take a star from that row. Regions squeezed into one line are the fastest early wins.
Count regions against rows
If a group of k regions lives entirely within k rows, those regions use up all k stars for those rows. Every cell of those rows outside the group can be crossed off, and the columns work the same way.
Watch the two-in-a-line trap
When a region's remaining open cells all lie in two adjacent columns of the same row band, the adjacency rule often removes one of them. Pairs of touching candidates cancel each other because both can never be stars.
Use hints only when truly stuck
A hint reveals one correct star, which can unlock a whole region — but it also skips the deduction that makes solving satisfying. Exhaust your crosses and counting arguments first, then spend a hint on the hardest region.
Ready to play? Start with today's 5×5, warm up with the puzzle library, or revisit the archive. Want to solve faster? See the strategy guide.