How to play Sea Battle

Sea Battle is a two-player guessing game played on two grids of 10 by 10 squares, with rows marked A to J and columns 1 to 10. Each player hides a fleet of five ships on their own grid. Then you take turns calling out one square of the other player's grid, and they answer "hit" or "miss". The first player to sink every ship in the other fleet wins. A game takes about fifteen minutes.

The fleet

• Carrier, 5 squares
• Dreadnought, 4 squares
• Cruiser, 3 squares
• Submarine, 3 squares
• Destroyer, 2 squares

That is 17 squares in all. Ships lie across or up and down, never diagonally, and the whole ship must be on the grid. Ships may touch each other, but they can never overlap.

Hiding your fleet

• Your ships start in a random layout. Drag a ship to move it, or tap a ship and then tap the square where it should go.
• Tap a ship that is already picked up to turn it from across to up and down.
• Shuffle deals a whole new layout. When you are happy with it, tap Ready. After that, the ships stay put.

A turn

• You fire first. Pick any square in Enemy waters that you have not tried yet.
• On a computer, point at a square to aim, then click. On a phone, the first tap aims and the second tap fires.
• A white peg is a miss. A red peg is a hit. A hit does not tell you which ship it was.
• When every square of a ship has been hit, the ship is sunk: you hear which one, and it shows on the grid.
• Then the other side fires one shot at your fleet. Turns always alternate, hit or miss.

Tips

1. Hunt like a checkerboard. The smallest ship is two squares long, so firing at every other square is enough to find every ship.
2. Finish what you hit. After a hit, fire at the four squares around it. Once you have two hits side by side, follow that line to both ends.
3. Mind what is left. If only the Carrier is still afloat, it needs five open squares in a row. Skip the gaps that are too small.
4. Spread your own ships. Ships bunched together let one lucky hit lead to the next. A few ships along the edges and a few in open water keep the other side guessing.
5. Use the Hint. It points to the square where the ships still afloat could be hiding in the most ways.

Today's fleet

The Daily Fleet is a hidden fleet that is the same for everyone today. Nobody fires back: you simply try to sink all five ships in as few shots as you can. The very best score is 17 shots. There is no Hint in the daily game, and your first try of the day is the one that counts.

Questions

Is this the game I played with pegs and plastic grids? Yes. Same grids, same five ships, same rules. Sea Battle is the plain, generic name.

Does the computer cheat? No. It only knows what you would know: where it fired, and whether each shot was a hit or a miss.

How strong is the computer? Easy fires mostly at random and only sometimes follows up a hit, the way many people play at first. Normal hunts on a checkerboard and always finishes a ship it has found. Sharp works out where the remaining ships could be after every shot, and needs about 45 shots to sink a fleet.

Can I play with a friend? Playing with friends over a link, each on their own phone, is coming soon.

Do I need an account? No. Your game is saved in this browser, so you can close the page and come back.