Lineups

Hard Lineups puzzles

Hard puzzles have five columns, four rows and a dozen clues of every kind, and at least once, two clues give something away only when you put them together.

Practice gives you puzzles you haven't solved yet, as many as you like, and keeps your best time without hints. Every puzzle is made and checked by a computer: it has exactly one answer, and logic alone gets you there.

How to play Lineups

1. Each row of the board is a set of pictures, and every picture belongs in exactly one column of its row.
2. The clues under the board say where pictures are, compared with each other.
3. Rule pictures out of cells until each cell holds just one, and every clue is true. There's exactly one way.

Reading the clues

Boxes that touch are next to each other, and boxes stacked are in one column. Two arrows mean the pictures can be either way round, dots mean somewhere further along, and a red slash means not.

• The apple and the fish are in the same column.
• The apple and the fish are not in the same column.
• The apple is just left of the pear, in the next column.
• The apple is next to the pear, on either side.
• The apple is not next to the pear.
• The apple is somewhere left of the pear: next to it or further.
• The pear is between the apple and the lemon, either way round.

Tap a cell to see its row's pictures big: tap one to rule it out of the cell, or back in, and hold one to place it. With a mouse, click a small picture in a cell to rule it out, and right-click to place it. On a keyboard, move with the arrow keys, press a digit to rule that picture out or back in, and Shift and a digit to place it. Once a cell is down to one picture, the rest of its row loses that picture by itself (turn Tidy rows off in the settings to do it yourself). Tap a clue to cross it off once it has nothing more to tell you.

Solving tips

• Start at the edges. A picture somewhere left of another can't be in the last column, and the other can't be in the first.
• Look along each row. When a picture has only one cell left in its row, it goes there, even if that cell still shows other pictures.
• Put clues together. Two clues about the same picture often say more together than either does alone.
• Stuck? A hint shows the next step and the clue behind it, and points out a picture ruled out by mistake.