Hints for 7 August

Read only as far down this list as you need to. Hint 1 is nearly free; hint 4 will effectively hand you the opening.

  1. Size and count. This grid is 9×9, so you are placing 9 stars — one per row, one per column, one per colour region, and no two touching.
  2. Where to start. The first star to find is in row 5: it sits in the leftmost column used anywhere on the board.
  3. The region to solve first. Region 1 holds the star for row 1. Regions that are long and thin are almost always the ones to crack first.
  4. How tight it gets. Exactly 4 pairs of stars sit in adjacent rows just two columns apart — the tightest legal spacing there is.