How to play Pingwreck: rules and triangulation strategy
Everything you need to play Pingwreck, plus tips to get a better score.
How to play
- Three wrecks lie hidden under today's sea (two on Mondays, four on Sundays). Find every cell of every wreck in fewer pings than the bot.
- The sea grows through the week: 7×7 on Monday (2 wrecks) and Tuesday, 8×8 from Wednesday to Friday (Friday always has a 4-cell wreck), 9×9 on Saturday and Sunday (4 wrecks).
- Tap a cell to ping it. A wreck cell lights up as a hit. Any other cell shows how many steps away the nearest wreck is, counting across and up or down, never diagonally. Sunk wrecks count too.
- Each reading also has a colour: yellow 1, orange 2, green 3, blue 4, dark blue 5 or more. Closer is warmer and brighter, farther is darker, so it reads without colour too.
- A hit is red with a diamond in the colour of its wreck, so you always know which wreck you've hit. When every cell of a wreck is hit, it sinks: its outline appears and its shape fills in above the sea.
- Wrecks are 2 to 4 cells, each a different shape, and they never touch, not even at the corners. Their shapes are shown above the sea; which way they lie is up to you to find out.
- Grey cells can no longer hide a wreck, going by what you've revealed: they are closer to a ping than its reading, or touch a sunk wreck, or touch hits of two different wrecks. Pinging one is a wasted ping. Switch this help off in settings for the 🎯 no-hints badge.
- Long-press (or right-click, or press M) a cell to note × empty or ⚑ maybe a wreck; again to clear it. The Notes button turns every tap into a note. Notes are free: they don't count as pings, and pinging a cell removes its note.
- No undo: every ping counts. The counter shows your pings and the bot's: it played the same sea beforehand. Fewer pings than the bot is 🏆, the same is 🤝, both ⭐⭐⭐; up to 3 pings more is ⭐⭐, otherwise ⭐.
- On a keyboard, the arrow keys move around the sea, Enter pings and M takes a note. Sonar sounds (higher as you get closer) and vibration can be switched off in Settings.
Strategy: think in rings, then triangulate
A distance is a ring. If a cell reads 3, the nearest wreck is exactly 3 steps away, somewhere on a diamond around it, and nothing is closer. Everything inside the diamond is empty water: ⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛🟨⬜🟨⬛⬛ ⬛🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨⬛ 🟨⬜⬜3️⃣⬜⬜🟨 ⬛🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨⬛ ⬛⬛🟨⬜🟨⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛ ⬜ empty · 🟨 the ring where the wreck can be
Two rings cross in very few places. Ping a second cell away from the first: the best next ping is where both rings meet. 3️⃣⬜⬜⬜3️⃣ ⬜⬜🎯⬜⬜ ⬜⬛⬛⬛⬜ 🎯 is exactly 3 steps from both pings
Big numbers are good news. A 5 clears a wide diamond of water in one go. Early on, a ping near the middle of the sea tells you the most.
Hunt, then finish. After a hit, the rest of that wreck is right next to it: check the fleet list for its shape and ping the neighbours. Wrecks never touch, so once one is sunk, the cells around it are empty.
Sharing shows the heat of each ping, in order, never where it was: 🟥 hit, 🟨 1 step, 🟧 2, 🟩 3, 🟦 4 or more.