Fuses

Medium Fuses puzzles

Medium puzzles are 6×6 with eight match heads and three to light, and the fuses loop, so fire can reach a lantern two ways: it catches by the shorter. Each one comes down to the last match to light, which a lantern still waiting needs exactly its number away.

Practice gives you puzzles you haven't solved yet, as many as you like, and keeps your best time without hints. Every puzzle has exactly one solution and can be solved by logic alone.

How to play Fuses

1. Fuses join the dots. Some dots are paper lanterns, each with a number, and some fuse ends have a match head.
2. The puzzle says how many matches to light. Tap a match to light it, tap again to rule it out, and again to clear it.
3. Press Light. Fire runs from every lit match along every fuse, a segment a second, splitting wherever fuses meet. A dot catches when the fire first gets there.
4. Every lantern has to catch at exactly its number of seconds: not sooner, and not later.

Tap a lantern to see how many segments each match is from it: red is too close, green exactly right. A lantern turns red as soon as a lit match is too close to it. If some lanterns catch at the wrong second, each shows when it did catch, and you can try again. Undo has no limit, and every puzzle has exactly one solution.

Solving tips

• Too close rules a match out. A match nearer to a lantern than its number would light it too soon, so it stays unlit.
• Every lantern needs one exactly that far. Once the others at the right distance are ruled out, the last one left has to be lit.
• Count the matches. When all the matches to light are lit, the rest stay unlit. When the ones still possible are just enough, they're all lit.
• Look for lanterns that can't share. If no match is the right distance from two of them, they need one each, and that can use up every match left to light.
• Stuck? A hint points to a match you can work out next, and says why.