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Daily

Play Hitori

A new daily Hitori every day, plus 600 unlimited puzzles from 5x5 to 15x15. The classic Nikoli shading puzzle — free, in your browser, no signup.

PlayHow to play

How to Play

  1. 1.

    Shade cells so that no number appears more than once among the unshaded cells of any row or column — duplicates are fine among shaded cells.

  2. 2.

    Shaded cells may never touch horizontally or vertically. Diagonal contact is allowed.

  3. 3.

    All unshaded cells must remain connected as a single region — a shade that walls off part of the board is illegal.

  4. 4.

    The board is solved when all three rules hold at once. Every puzzle has exactly one solution, and you can always reach it by logic alone.

About Play Hitori

Hitori is the classic Japanese shading puzzle from Nikoli, the Tokyo publisher behind Sudoku's rise. It debuted in 1990 as puzzle #29 in Puzzle Communication Nikoli, and its full name — "Hitori ni shite kure" — translates roughly to "leave me alone", which is exactly what you do to the duplicate numbers: shade them out until every number that remains stands alone in its row and column.

The rules take a minute to learn. Shade cells so that no number repeats among the unshaded cells of any row or column, never shade two cells that touch side-by-side, and keep all the unshaded cells connected as one region. Those three constraints interlock into surprisingly deep logic: a 5×5 board is a two-minute warm-up, while a 15×15 board is a proper sit-down solve.

Play Hitori gives the puzzle the daily-game treatment. Every day there is one shared 5×5 board — the same for every player — with a streak to protect and a result you can share. Around the daily sits an unlimited collection of 600 puzzles across five sizes and three difficulty grades, every one of them machine-verified to have exactly one solution reachable by pure deduction. If a puzzle here ever seems to need a guess, it doesn't — there is always a logical next step, and the how-to-play guide teaches the full technique ladder, from sandwiches and triples up to connectivity arguments.

Everything runs free in your browser on phone, tablet, or desktop — no account, no downloads. Your progress, streaks, and best times are saved on your device.

Features

  • A new daily Hitori

    One fresh 5×5 board every day — the same puzzle for everyone, with a streak to keep.

  • 600 unlimited puzzles

    Five sizes from 5×5 to 15×15, each in easy, medium, and hard.

  • Every puzzle verified

    One solution per board, reachable by pure logic — no guessing required, ever.

  • Smart assists

    Auto-circle neighbors, undo, and live error highlighting for duplicates, illegal shades, and cut-off cells.

  • Permanent archive

    Every past daily stays playable at its own URL.

  • Shareable links

    Every board has a permanent URL you can send to anyone.

FAQ

Hitori is a Japanese logic puzzle published by Nikoli in 1990. You shade cells in a numbered grid so that no number repeats among unshaded cells in any row or column, no two shaded cells touch side-by-side, and all unshaded cells stay connected as one region. The name comes from 'Hitori ni shite kure' — roughly, 'leave me alone.'

Three rules: (1) no number may appear more than once among the unshaded cells of any row or column; (2) shaded cells may never be horizontally or vertically adjacent, though diagonal contact is fine; (3) the unshaded cells must form a single connected region. Solve all three at once and the board is done.

Not here. Every puzzle on Play Hitori is machine-verified to have exactly one solution reachable by step-by-step deduction, and boards that would require trial-and-error are discarded at generation. If you are stuck, there is always a provable next move — usually a sandwich, triple, pair, or connectivity argument.

A new 5×5 board is published every day at midnight US Eastern, and every player worldwide gets the same one. Solving it on the day extends your streak; every past daily stays playable at its own permanent URL in the archive.

A circle is a pencil mark meaning 'this cell is proven white.' Tapping a cell cycles it: shaded, then circled, then back to normal. When you shade a cell, its four neighbors are auto-circled (you can toggle this off), because the no-adjacent-shading rule guarantees they stay white.

Five sizes — 5×5, 7×7, 9×9, 12×12, and 15×15 — each in easy, medium, and hard. Difficulty is graded by the techniques a board actually requires: easy boards fall to the starter patterns, medium boards add corner patterns and double-pairs, and hard boards demand connectivity arguments.

Yes — Singles is the name Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection uses for the identical genre. Same three rules, same logic. If you know Singles, you already know Hitori.

Completely. Every puzzle works in any modern browser on phone, tablet, or desktop — no account, no downloads, no paywall. Progress, streaks, and best times are stored on your device.