The Doppit Almanac · No. 02

Campit, a daily Tents and Trees puzzle

Pitch a tent beside every tree

What it is

Campit is the campsite puzzle known abroad as Tents and Trees, kept in Doppit's almanac as No. 02. The board holds a grove of pines and a stack of canvas, and numbered rails watch the whole arrangement from the edges.

Every tree has reserved exactly one tent, and the campers are particular. Nobody pitches out of reach of their tree, and nobody tolerates a neighbour, not even corner to corner.

How it plays

Set the camp under four regulations.

• Each tree pairs with one tent of its own, pitched in the square directly above, below, left or right of it. There are exactly as many tents as trees.
• Tents never touch one another, not even at corners.
• A numbered rail counts the tents in its row or column. Rails without numbers look the other way.
• Crosses are your own notes for plain grass. A tree turns gold once its tent stands, and a rail turns gold when its count comes true.

The difficulties

The almanac sets four boards a day. Easy folds up in thirty seconds to a minute. Medium holds out for one to three. Hard is an honest stretch of cross-hatched deduction, where a stuck square gives way to a single what-if: suppose it and follow the forced moves until a rule breaks. Expert plays on the same grid with boards picked to defeat that read, so a few times a solve the what-if needs a second supposition inside the first before a rule breaks. Come back tomorrow and the grove has grown differently. All of it is free.

Nearby in the almanac: Stellit, Islandit and Wellit