We're making islands trickier

If you play islands every morning, you might notice the boards getting trickier soon. To be exact: starting August 28, the puzzles will be more difficult.

For a while now, islands puzzles have been too easy. We collect metrics about solve times, and over half of islands puzzles are solved in under 20 seconds. Almost all are solved within 40 seconds. By far, it's the quickest of all our games.

Some people like how quick they are, but the intention wasn't to make them so fast. Our games vary in intended length, but for islands we aim for a sweet spot of 1-5 minutes (on average). The numbers say they needed to be recalibrated.

The 1s were making it super easy

A 1 in islands is already finished. You can immediately fill the sea cells around it without thinking. If you use the fill sea button, you don't even have to do that.

Our puzzles were ending up with a lot of 1s. A typical islands puzzle had thirteen clues, and eight of them were 1s. So most of the grid was falling into place before you'd used any deduction.

New boards have no 1s at all. The smallest island you'll see is a 2.

We want to encourage logical deduction

Islands (Nurikabe) is a beautiful puzzle when you take it step-by-step and apply the logical rules. It's so much fun to arrive at an "a-ha" moment and be able to fill a cell after thinking for a moment. This is the feeling we're hoping to create with islands.

But when they were too easy to "eyeball," you didn't need to think logically. You could fill it in on vibes alone, so you never got that feeling. Starting August 28, it should be harder to do this and find the right answer.

You'll have to wake your brain up

Sorry! The good news is that these are still pure logic puzzles. You never need to guess. Each puzzle can be solved using logical deduction. The hints are there if you need help figuring out the next step.

The archives are still there

Old puzzles are untouched, so archived puzzles will be the same as they always were. Fun fact: if you go all the way back to early January 2026, you'll see some islands puzzles that were 7x7, not 8x8. This isn't the first time we've had to recalibrate!

Give the new puzzles a whirl for a few days. If you have thoughts after that, let me know!